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; Tempted to unbelief 
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~ Digitized by the Internet Archive 
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https://archive.org/details/temptedtounbelieOOburr 


TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


BY 


REV be Fe BURRD, D,, 


AUTHOR OF “ECCE CCELUM,” “PATER MUNDI,” “AD FIDEM.” 


‘‘The Christian has greatly the advantage of the unbe- 
liever—having everything to gain and nothing to lose.” 
Byron. 


MUA RICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 


I50 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK, 


DEDICATION: 


To my Brother—my companion in col- 
lege, in foreign travel, in the Christian 
ministry, and in a desire to succor those 
who are tempted to unbelief. 


COPYRIGHT, 1882, 
BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 


The following lines, from the pen of an em1- 
nent scholar, express very forcibly all that I care 
to say in the way of preface to the present volume. 


“The shapes that frowned before the eyes 
Of the early world have fled, 
And all the life of earth and skies, 
Of streams and seas, is dead. 


“But ah! is naught save fable slain 
In this new realm of thought? 
Or has the shaft Primeval Truth 
And Truth’s great Author sought? 


“Ves, wisdom now is built on sense ; 
We measure and we weigh, 
We break and join, make rare and dense, 
And reason God away. 


“The wise have probed this wondrous world, 
And searched the stars, and find 
All curious facts and laws revealed, 
But no Almighty Mind. 


“From thinking dust we mould the spheres, 
And shape earth’s wondrous frame: 
If God had slept a million years, 
All things would be the same. 


PREFACE. 


“Oh, give me back a world of life; 
Something to love and trust, 
Something to quench my inward strife, 
And lift me from the dust. 


“T cannot live with nature dead, 
’*Mid laws and causes blind, 
Powerless on earth or overhead 
To trace all-guiding Mind. 


“Better the instinct of the brute 
That feels its God afar, 
Than reason to his praises mute, 
Talking with every star. 


“ Better the thousand deities 
That swarmed in Greece of yore, 
Than thought that scorns all mysteries, 
And dares all depths to explore. 


“ Better is childhood’s thoughtless trust 
Than manhood’s daring scorn ; 
The fear that creeps along the dust 
Than doubt in hearts forlorn. 


“ And knowledge, if it cost so dear, 
If such be reason’s day, 
I’ll lose the pearl without a tear, 
And grope my Star-lit way. 


“ And be the toils of wisdom cursed 
If such the meed we earn; 
If freezing pride and doubt are nursed, 
And faith forbid to burn.” 


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6 CONTENTS. 


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TEMPTED TO’ UNBELIEF. 


le 


FOR WHOM. 


THE following pages address themselves not 
so much to pronounced unbelievers as to those 
who as yet are only tempted to unbelief. 

This latter class, in our time, is very large, is 
comparatively promising, and can be reasoned 
with from broader and easier premises than can 
those who have fully gone over to the enemy— 
their enemy as well as ours. 

Some one has said that Doubt is the Devil of 
the 19th Century. The truth of this statement 
is not quite as clear as its strength; but however 
doubtful it may be whether our time is entitled 
to the bad preéminence among the ages that is 
assigned it, it is by no means doubtful whether 
unbelief exists among us in large proportions, 
and is exceedingly active, ingenious, and varied 
in its efforts to still enlarge itself. Its name is 


8 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


Proteus. Almost everybody is approached with 
its venturesome suggestions. This goes almost 
without saying among all who are reasonably 
well acquainted with current speech and _ lit- 
erature. They know that unbelief gossips in 
newspapers, tells stories in magazines, writes 
book-notices for reviews, holds symposia in quar- 
terlies, teaches in text-books and summer con- 
ventions, itinerates as male and female lecturers 
from one end of the land to the other. They 
know that it has a place on the staffs of nearly 
all the great secular journals, and in the Faculties 
of nearly all the larger institutions of learning; 
while it quite monopolizes the administration of 
not a few of these Great Powers, especially in 
Europe. They know that sometimes it even 
ventures to stand in pulpits, and instruct from 
theological chairs, and argue from under the 
mitres of bishops; and, having made a constit- 
uency for itself, defies ecclesiastical discipline. 
They know that it is daring, unscrupulous, poly- 
glot—suiting various speech deftly to various 
classes; giving primers to children, popular sci- 
ence to the million, and Herbert Spencers to the 
few; querying, guessing, insinuating, asserting, 
arguing, dogmatizing, philosophizing, and occa- 
sionally blaspheming, according to circumstances. 
Further, they know that it is being annually 


| 
| 
: 


FOR WHOM. 9 


reinforced in this country by armies of unbeliev- 
ers from abroad, from homespun nihilists up to 
noted professors wearing the togas of science. 

This means a sick air—so sick that one cannot 
venture to send out his child into the world with- 
out first providing him with a respirator, or 
vaccinating him for unbelief. It is fortunate 
that such preventives can be had; and very 
unfortunate that so few, even those of weakly 
constitution, can be persuaded to use them. So 
the epidemic rages. Some are dying, others are 
critically sick, and still others, a vastly larger 
class, are as yet only debilitated by the malarious 
air whose fungous spores, in the form of interro- 
- gation points, are being freely drawn in at every 
breath. ‘‘What about the ancestral faith?’ 
The right answer does not come back as clear 
and ringing as it could once have done. The 
invalids speak in a low voice. Their words 
hesitate. Their very breath is asthmatic. Unless 
something can be done for them they will in 
time come to have no breath at all. 

What can be done? ‘To sift out these death- 
germs from the atmosphere would be as impos- 
sible as the philosophers have found it to sift 
out life-germs from common air. Yet there is 
help. See the exact situation. Not yet com- 
mitted to unbelief, though variously tempted to 


Tempted to Unbelief. 2 


10 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


it; not yet fully under the malarious influences, 
though ailing; not yet benighted, though looking 
toward sunset; not yet away from Christian 
ground, though facing and pacing toward its 
boundaries; not yet fallen, though faltering; not 
yet veterans in the downward road, though be- 
ginners; not yet vacated of God and the Bible, 
though these are approaching the door, and per- 
haps setting hand to the latch—this is how mat- 
ters stand with them. Consequently, in appeal- 
ing to them we are not confined to the narrow 
premises from which we are compelled to address 
confirmed unbelievers. Christian views of things 
are still of some account. What unbelief is and 
does, as seen from the Scriptural point of view, 
still goes for something, perhaps for much. ‘This 
state of things may not long eontinue; but, for 
the present, the ancestral ideas, the believing 
forms of thought, the churchly testimonies and 
nurtures, have still a degree of sacredness and 
authority—the incipient Heeckels are not ex- 
actly ready to cast off the venerable traditions, 
and to concede that Nature is godless and king- 
less and fatherless; that we have no Heavenly 
Friend, no Almighty Saviour, and no divine 
message; that we have monkeys for our parents, 
and seaweeds and stones for grandparents; that 
we are mere lumps of matter, and die like dogs, 


FOR WHOM. II 


and live again only in our successors, and put 
forth our vices and virtues, our sorrows and joys 
by grim mechanical necessity; that life, will, 
thought, affe€tion, holiness, and sin are nothing 
but matter-motions convertible into gravity, 
eleGtricity, and the like; that yonder train of 
scars with its Apollyon locomotive and living 
freight of fair women and stately men, with all 
their plans and hopes and fears, as well as yonder 
locomotive suns with their planetary trains and 
orderly astronomies, were all evolved out of a fire 
mist solely by its own unthinking force and laws; 
I say they are not quite ready to accept all this 
as so much science. 

This is very promising. It is almost the sun 
of Austerlitz. Surely a class of persons so large, 
so new to the wrong, and so broadly approach- 
able, should have great and prompt attention 
from the friends of religion. I say, prompt. It 
is soon or never with most of these people. Cars 
moving down so steep a grade soon get beyond 
being stopped. And such as rush on to the 
bottom are commonly so broken by the fall as to 
be beyond repair. If not, who will undertake to 
draw them to the top of the hill again? But 
these BEGINNERS in the downward way, with 
but little momentum as yet, can be drawn back 
and rescued with comparative ease. Let them 


12 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


be laid hold of before they go further and fare 
worse. Show them how in the hands of unbelief 
half-truths are made to do the work of whole 
falsehoods; and how the sowing of doubts is the 
sowing of dragons’ teeth which must ere long 
sprout into armed and hostile men. Is there not 
some spear of such heavenly temper that it can 
touch the ‘‘toad squat at the ear of Eve,’’ and 
make it to appear the Satan that it is, before the 
temptation proceeds further, and the tempter 
enters at the mouth? 

Obsta principizs, has come to be almost as 
good English as it is Latin; and it is quite as 
good philosophy as either. 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH. rg 


LT. 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 


Suips show their colors. Politicians define 
their position. It may be well for me to do the 
same thing more fully than I have yet done—to 
show at the outset from what point of view Iam 
about to write, and to what Iam anxious to keep 
or win the reader. 

Shall I accept the Apostles’ Creed as my con- 
fession of faith? Yes—as far as it goes. 

Shall I accept the ae words of Jean 
Jacques Rousseau ? 

‘‘TImagine all your philosophers, ancient and 
modern, to have first exhausted their eccentric 
systems of forces, of chance, of fatality, of neces- 
sity, of atoms, of an animated world, of a living 
matter, of materialism of every kind; and that, 
after them all, the illustrious Clarke enlightens 
the world by announcing finally the Being of 
beings, and the Disposer of events; with what 
universal admiration, with what uhanimous ap- 
plause would not this new system have been 
received—so grand, so consoling, so sublime, so 


>) 
fitted to exalt the soul, to give a basis to virtue, 


14 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


and at the same time so striking, so luminous, so 
simple, and, as it seems to me, offering fewer 
things incomprehensible to the human mind than 
one finds of absurdities in every other system. I 
said to myself, The insoluble objections are com- 
mon to all, because the human mind is too lim- 
ited to explain them; they prove nothing against 
any one in particular; but what a difference in 
the direét proofs! Ought not, therefore, that 
scheme alone to be preferred which explains 
everything, and has no more difficulties than the 
rest? ‘The gospel has marks of truth so great, 
so striking, so perfectly inimitable, that the in- 
ventor of it would be more astonishing than the 
Meron 

These words remind me of another testimony 
which Satan himself is said to have given to 
Jesus: ‘‘I know thee who thou art, the Holy 
One of God.’’ Both testimonies set forth forcibly 
what I hold to be pure truth, though it comes 
through unclean channels; and I accept both for 
my banner—as far as they go. And they certainly 
go a long way. 

And yet not as far as the truth, in my view, 
warrants, or as the needs of the time require. 
Let me explain. 

In these days men are chiefly tempted to 
unbelief in the name of SCIENCE. Kepler, Boyle, 


1 
: 
| 
‘ 
| 
| 
: 
| 
: 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 15 


Bacon, Newton, Pascal, Linnzeus, Cuvier, Davy, 
Faraday, Brewster, Agassiz, and others of like 
solid and incontestible renown as scientists, were 
staunch believers; and every one of them would 
have subscribed in a bold hand to this deliberate 
judgment of Sir Isaac Newton, ‘‘No sciences are 
better attested than the religion of the Bible.” 
But latterly not a few who know not Joseph 
have come forward into the places of these men. 
Speaking with the voice and port of science, 
they invite the people to cast away their Bibles 
and their God. Says one of these tempters, 
‘Science conduéts God to the frontiers with 
honor, thanks him for his provisional services, 
and politely bows him away.’’ ‘This is one view 
of the relation of science to religion. Let me 
give another equally outspoken and considerably 
less profane. And this shall be my complete 
confession of faith—the one which seems called 
for by our time, and which will be found every- 
where underlying the thought of the present 
volume. 
WHAT IS SCIENCE ? 

As everybody knows, this word has long been 
popularly used with great looseness. It is a 
highly respectable word, sounds remarkably well, 
and consequently people have been very free in 
giving it to their favorite notions of whatever 


16 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


sort. ‘The quack calls his notions about the 
treatment of disease the scéence of medicine; the 
small politician dignifies his ideas of government 
with no less name than the sczence of politics; 
another feels the bumps on heads, and insists on 
speaking of the scéence of phrenology. The 
saie loose use of the word is not uncommon even 
among scholars. Go where you will, you will 
find capable and accomplished men giving it 
freely to mere plausibilities, and indeed to spec- 
ulations that cannot yet be said to be plausible. 
They will tack on to approved fa¢ts and princi- 
ples fanciful notions about them, having more or 
less verisimilitude, and then quietly give the 
dignified name of sczence to the whole colle¢tion. 
There are sciences, uniformly treated as such, a 
very considerable part of which consists of per- 
petually shifting queries and fancies. Germany 
raises a crop of what she calls scientific do€trines 
not quite as often as she does a crop of grapes, 
crushes them as regularly, bottles their essence in 
books, stows them away in cellars and attics for 
another generation, or exports them; and then 
coolly sets about raising a new crop. 

Were you not once at a scientific convention ? 
It was not the annual meeting of the British 
Association, though it might have been. You 
were astonished. A young man, never before 


y 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 17 


present at a session of professional scientists, in- 
deed fresh from the study of logic, and especially 
of that section that treats of the importance of 
accurately defining our terms, you were quite un- 
prepared to find such use of language current in 
such a place. And you went home and wrote 
(did you not?) to a friend, without a thought of 
its ever being published: ‘‘I have made a dis- 
covery. I have found nebulee in unlooked-for 
quarters; and they are not aggregations of stars, 
but genuine fog. I have found that philosophy 
and science mean, ‘As you like it’—that these 
names are shining fog-banks which can be made 
to take almost any shape, and to spread them- 
selves so as to cover almost any notion you may 
please. Oh, that these Magi in long robes knew 
better where their Babe is to be found--that they 
had a less vague and unreasonable idea of what 
science is! It would save them and us a world 
of trouble. I do not objeét to teachers of science 
having their suppositions and speculations, or to 
their telling them to audiences; but ‘let him that 
hath a dream tell it asa dream.’ I object to his 
calling his dream science. Especially do I object 
to his putting it in the foreground, and making all 
things else mere mirrors to reflect it. In such case 
I indignantly exclaim with Goethe, ‘Tell us what 
you kuow,; I have guesses enough of my own.’ ”’ 


Tempted to Unbelief. 3 


18 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


Doubtless, if we allow ourselves to use the 
word science after such a fashion, there is a very 
varied and irreconcilable confli& between it and 
religious faith. Not only does it conduG Chris- 
tianity and God to the frontiers and dismiss them 
as no longer wanted, but it also condués into 
banishment with them the common sense and 
consciences of mankind and the principles of 
Common morals; for all these have been opposed 
in the name of science. A very brilliant train to 
take their departure! Can the world afford to 
let them go without asking the would-be con- 
ductor for his credentials ? 

If science is a well-considered digest of the 
leading assured truths in any great branch of 
knowledge, then is there not only no confli€ 
between it and religion, but religion ts itself a 
science. "This is the First Article of my confes- 
sion of faith. I not only hold with Voltaire that 
“if God did not exist it would be necessary to 
invent him; but also with Descartes and New- 
ton that the main religious dotrines rest on as 
good and commanding a foundation of evidence 
as the most vaunted of the physical sciences, or 
even the mathematical. ‘To be sure our means 
of knowing them are not differentials and inte- 
grals and galvanic batteries—but what of that? 
Intuition, observation, experience, testimony, in- 


—— eee 


A. CONFESSION OF FAITH. 19 


duction—these, in the last analysis, are the means 
by which we know all the secular sciences; and 
by the same means we know all those more ulti- 
mate principles of natural religion—which, prac- 
tically, all mankind have agreed in accepting—as 
well as those main-points of Christian doctrine 
held in common by all Christian denominations. 
As to system, geometry itself is not set in more 
precise and capital order than are the chief reli- 
gious principles in the great Christian Contes- 
sions. 

So to us these Confessions, in the great features 
common to them all, express a science ; and all 
its capable teachers, especially those of liberal 
culture, are as much scientists and experts as are 
professional chemists or astronomers. ‘These are 
professors, it may be, in that school for youth 
which is called a college ; they are professors in 
that wider school which includes in its classes all 
ages and cultures, and very likely the secular 
professors themselves. Only they call their lec- 
tures sermons, and try to make them as plain and 
practical as possible. Does this make them 
unscientific? Perhaps we have heard of such a 
thing as Applied Chemistry, or even Applied 
Mathematics. We have also our Applied Theol- 
ogy. 

‘‘But see—into how many disputing sects you 


20 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


religionists are divided!’’ I was once present 
at a Scientific Congress. It was not the illustri- 
ous French Academy—though it might have been, 
so far as the matter in hand is concerned. ‘The 
members mainly agreed in Chemistry, but at once 
split up into several denominations the moment 
the papers read began to pass behind the faéts 
into the philosophy of them. In Geology, they 
were mostly Uniformitarians, and held to an 
unsolid earth, but still were divided into several 
conflicting schools. ‘They all held unwaveringly 
to Astronomy in the main, but if any one sup- 
poses that they were a unit in their astronomical 
theories and speculations, he is very wide of the 
truth. They could have fought till this time 
over many an ancient bone, had not circumstan- 
ces choked them apart—over the condition of 
Jupiter, the Saturnian rings, the Intra-Mercurial 
and extra Neptunian planets, the cometic and 
solar theories, the chemical and mechanical his- 
tory of our system, the Nebule and speétroscopic 
findings, and even the ultimate foundations of 
that great instrument of celestial research, the 
Calculus. And as to what is called Metaphysi- 
cal science, ah me! there were signs of almost 
as many schools as there were persons. If lists 
could have been set and trumpets sounded to the 
charge, we should have splintered many a lance, 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 21 


and perhaps finally run each other through and 
through. As it was, we contented ourselves 
with dogmatizing, and looking daggers at each 
other. And I could not well help feeling that it 
ill becomes secular scientists, from out their glass 
houses, to cast stones at religion on account of 
its many sects. We do dispute somewhat over 
certain theological points, I confess; but do T'yn- 
dall and Bastian, Darwin and Wallace never 
dispute with each other? We do sometimes 
dogmatize over our Bibles; but if we exterminate 
all dogmatists, or only the fiercer breed of them, 
we shall have to go without the pale of the 
Christian Church, and even into the citadel of 
the mathematicians. So, my friend, if you are 
ever tempted to stumble at Presbyterians, Epis- 
copalians, Congregationalists, Methodists, and so 
on; also, at the faculty some believers have of 
vigorous and triumphant assertion without at- 
tempt to prove (witness this chapter, which is 
only vexzllum proponendum), 1 beg you will 
allow me to introduce you to my very distin- 
guished friend, Professor Joseph Louis Lagrange, 
President of the Institute of France, who will 
assure you that this sort of procedure is strictly 
according to scientific usage. 

If Religion is a science as well as an art, what 
is its relation to other sciences? Plainly, z¢ zs the 


22 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


supreme science. ‘This is the Second Article of 
my Creed. 

If the main doétrines of Religion are true, 
then, beyond controversy, there is no system of 
truth in the whole round of the astronomical 
heavens to compare with it in importance. Just 
think of it—God is, has given a copious written 
Revelation to men, holds them responsible in an- 
other life for their conduét in this, yet is loving 
as well as righteous, has made in his own person 
atonement for sin, will pardon it and even open 
the gates of an endless heaven to all men on cer- 


tain reasonable conditions; if such seed-faéts are | 


as scientific as the high priest of modern science 
affirmed them to be, then what a science Religion 
is! It certainly has no peer. It certainly is more 
than Bacon’s Scéentia Scientiarum. ‘This most 
ancient of all the sciences deals with grander sub- 
jects and has grander corollaries than any other. 
It is beyond telling the most useful — having 
closer relations to human happiness, both here 
and hereafter; being, in faét, the only science 
that nobody can do without, in which everybody 
needs to be an expert, and which comes into play 
at all times and in all places—true science for the 
million. Without it the circle of the sciences is 
a broken circuit, and so unable to transmit the 
currents of moral power through the community ; 


ee 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 23 


nay, it is the only science that generates those 
spiritual dynamics by which alone society can be 
regenerated, or even kept from becoming putrid. 
It is not enough to claim for such a sacred science 
as this an equal standing among secular sciences. 
It is gucen by Divine right. From the very na- 
ture of the case, it has unlimited commission to 
govern—in domestic life, in business, in civil 
affairs, and also in the whole constellation of 
Arts and Sciences... I say Sciences; for plainly it 
has right to give law to scholarly researches of 
every sort as well as to the buying and selling 
of the world; has the right to sit regnant in the 
laboratory, behind telescopes and microscopes, and 
even on the differentials and integrals of the math- 
ematician, as well as in the daily inter¢ourse of 
man with man. So it ought to get queenly atten- 
tion and honor. It ought to have the chief place 
in education, instead of the no-place which some 
would give. Alas for the Republic when our 
common schools are swept clean of Bibles and our 
colleges of Christian science! And no scientist 
should be half as zealous in studying or teaching 
his Botany or his Astronomy as he is in studying 
or teaching that higher science which alone sanc- 
tifies and saves. 

So thought the scholarly fathers of New Eng- 
land. ‘To such ideas their whole lives were ad- 


24 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


justed—and their learning. Religion, both as a 
doétrine and as a praétice, was before and behind 
and in the midst of their studies. To them no 
lore was so real, so high, as sacred lore. The chief 
use to which they put every scholarly research 
and attainment was to manifest the being and 
ways of God; to illustrate religion, promote its 
reception, and enforce its ‘decrees; in short, to 
make them serviceable as handmaids to Religion, 
and to do for it what the auxiliary verbs do to 
Grammar. ‘This, they considered, was according 
to the normal relations of things. Religion was 
the natural centre of all other truth, and espe- 


cially of the secular sciences. ‘T‘hése planets must. 


revolve about, be subordinated to, and get light 
and warmth and beauty from this sun. Else they 
will roll in darkness. Else they will become 
globes of ice. Else they will fly off in tangents ; 
become nomads and Bedouins at that, plundering 
away the best hopes and resources of mankind ; 
become as irregular and capricious as lunatic com- 
ets were once supposed to be, and to be feared as 
they were feared when “from their tails they 
shook pestilence and war;’? and at last shatter 
each other and the world to pieces. 

Were not the fathers right? Agnosticism is 
‘‘a doétrine of despair.’’ As Tennyson sings, 


A CONFESSION OF FAITH. 26 


“ And the suns of the limitless Universe sparkled and shone 


in the sky, 

Flashing with fires as of God, but we knew that their light 
was a lie— 

Bright as with deathless hope—but, however they sparkled 
and shone, 


The dark little worlds running round them were worlds of 
woe like our own— 

No soul in the heaven above, no soul on the earth below, 

A fiery scroll written over with lamentation and woe. 


“Oh, we poor orphans of nothing—alone on that lonely 
shore— 

Born of the brainless Nature who knew not that which she 
bore! 

Trusting no longer that earthly flower would be heavenly 
fruit— 

Come from the brute, poor souls—no souls—and to die with 
the brute— 


“Why should we bear with an hour of torture, a moment of 
pain, 

If every man die for ever, if all his griefs are in vain, 

And the homeless planet at length will be wheeled through 
the silence of space, 

Motherless evermore of an ever-vanishing race, 

When the worm shall have writhed its last, and its last bro- 
ther-worm will have fled 

From the dead fossil skull that is left in the rocks of an earth 
that is dead ? 


Tempted to Unbelief, 4 


26 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


ITI. 


REAL UNBEULIEF? 


MEN often think their bodily condition worse 
than it is. They think they have the consump- 
tion, or the dropsy, or organic disease of the heart ; 
but the disease is imaginary. ‘Too much leisure, 
nervous apprehension, a morbid fancy, reading 
‘‘ Every Man his own Doétor’’—such things have 
misled their judgments, and they torment them- 
selves and their friends with fears and expenses 
for which there is not the least occasion. 

Similar mistakes are sometimes made in re- 
gard to the mind. Who has not heard people 
say, and sometimes honestly, that they ‘‘have no 
talents,’’ especially in certain given dire€tions? 
‘They have no faculty for expressing them- 


selves.’? ‘‘ Their mathematical, or classical, or 
poetical, or mechanical ability amounts to noth- 
ing.’ But, after a time, circumstances put them 


under pressure, and lo, it is found that they can 
talk and write and translate and reckon after a 
manner they had thought impossible. ‘Ihe Power 
was merely ‘‘sleeping in the hinder part of the 
ship on a pillow.’’ Who has not heard people 


———— SS 


Se 


Se ee ee 


REAL UNBELIEF! 27 


say, and say honestly, that they ‘‘have no feel- 
ing,’’ when in fact they are in a state of profound 
religious interest—an interest so intense as to pic- 
ture itself in every feature and loudly summon 
the sympathy of the most careless observer? ‘he 
passion of love, in its earlier stages, is often not 
recognized by the subjects of it. Indeed it some- 
times acquires vast strength before circumstances 
so tefle&t the light upon it as to bring it distin@tly 
to the notice of the heart where it has hidden. 
The man is surprised. He had no idea of the 
state of his affections. And should circumstances 
make it necessary to suppress his affeétion, he 
would find himself called to one of the severest 
struggles of his life. 

Have yonder men any religious faith? They 
say not; they think not. They are infidels, athe- 
ists, skeptics—recognized as such in the commu- 
nity, confidently speaking in the interests of unbe- 
lief, perhaps priding themselves on their attitude, 
and proclaiming it with full voice to the four 
winds. It may be that they are as solidly unbe- 
lieving as they think themselves. That there are 
intellectual unbelievers in God and the Scriptures 
does not admit of question ; and it is just possible 
that these men are among the number. But the 
contrary is also possible, nay, probable, despite 
the thunder and lightning of their strong asser- 


28 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF, 


tions and impressions to the contrary. ‘There is 
such a thing asa latent faith, just as there is latent 
heat or moisture. One would hardly think there 
could be any heat in that wintry air that cuts like 
a knife; but apply to it a certain pressure, and 
you will bring a spark out of its ar&tic bosom. 
One can hardly conceive of any water being hid- 
den away in that droughty summer air; but sud- 
denly compa¢t it by your cold or your hydrostatic 
press, and you shall press out of it the drops of 
rain or dew. Was it not mere white paper? It 
had been in his possession for many years, and he 
had never thought it anything else. But lo, one 
day, as he stood by the fire, certain written lines 
made their appearance. He read, and found him- 
self in possession of a secret which had really been 
his, in a latent state, for years. 

I have no doubt it is so with most nominal 
unbelievers of Christian lands. They are pos- 
sessed of a latent faith. Certain conceivable cir- 
cumstances would press it out into manifestation. 
In my judgment, founded on extensive observa- 
tion as well as on a@ priori grounds, there are very 
few, if any, of the so-called unbelievers who 
would not, if all the coverings were taken off 
from their hearts, reveal at the bottom a view of 
God and the Scriptures as having at least a bal- 
ance of likelihood in their favor. 


REAL UNBELIEF? 29 


If you bring a substance to a chemist that he 
may tell you its constituents, very likely he will 
be able to announce at sight what its main ele- 
ments are. But if you want to know whether 
there is not in it some small trace of ammonia, he 
cannot answer till after a delicate chemical analy- 
sis. Such small measures do not at once report 
themselves to his senses; so it is only after he has 
gone through certain disintegrating processes in 
his laboratory that he is able to meet your in- 
quiry, and inform you that the substance contains 
not only a small percentage of ammonia, but also 
a little iodine and other elements whose presence 
it had not occurred to him to suspe¢ét. Yet you 
can hardly be said to be surprised ; it is so com- 
mon a thing for a careful scientific examination 
to bring to light unsuspected faéts. And it ought 
not to surprise us should careful inquest into un- 
believers about us discover many things that do 
not report themselves easily at the surface—and 
among them a religious faith of the intellectual 
sort, of which neither others nor themselves were 
aware. 

The fact is, the fundamental dotrines of reli- 
gion—which proclaim the existence of Deity, of 
messages from him, and of a great future for the 
human soul depending on charaéter and conduét 
in the present, are doctrines of humanity, being al- 


30 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


most universally consented to by the race. How- 
ever we may account for it, there is a strong ten- 
dency among men to believe in such things. ‘This 
strong tendency is not easily cast out of any man; 
it may well be doubted whether it is ever thor- 
oughly expelled. Doubtless men sometimes think 
themselves, as well as are thought by others, to 
have quite rid themselves of the current religious 
belief. ‘They make large professions of the total- 
ity and untrembling stability of their unbelief; to 
hear them talk, one would think no granite moun- 
tain could be firmer; but lo, some revival passes 
over the community like a summer shower, and 
the mountain melts away as if but a fog-bank, 
without the slightest assault from argument; or 
some great sorrow comes, that refuses to be con- 
soled save by the ancient faith; or death itself 
knocks at the door, or seems to do so, and the 
startled soul, taking a new inventory of its pos- 
sessions, finds, as did Volney and Voltaire and 
Paine, that its supposed unbelief is all hollow, 
and can ring out most dismal knells under the 
rappings of those skeleton fingers. 

Faith! Yes, it has long been covered up and 
laid away as if dead, without tears or ceremonial, 
in some dark cave of the soul; but it turns out to 
have been a case of premature interment; the 
noise of the body falling into ruins awakens the 


REAL UNBELIEF? 3Y 


sleeper, and the atheist calls for help on the God 
whose existence he has roundly denied, and the 
infidel seeks comfort from the Bible which he has 
declared a tissue of fabrications, and begs succor 
at the hands of Jesus, whom he has denounced as 
an impostor. Did not these men for years give 
tokens of being wholly without faith? But death 
is an analyst whose crucible and galvanic shocks 
give wonderfully delicate findings, and show in 
the soul the presence of elements not suspected 
before. 

Ah, Volney, who would have thought it of 
you! Have you not published to all the world 
in your Travels, your Ruins, your Lectures on 
History, that it isa sure thing that Christianity is 
all imposture and God himself a clumsy fabrica- 
tion of priests; and expressed your wonder that 
any sensible man could for a moment entertain 
such transparent absurdities? And in the salons 
and cafés and normal schools of Paris your tongue 
has blasphemed as boldly as your pen. Nay, 
only two hours ago, when your vessel was pleas- 
antly skimming the waters of Lake Erie—not a 
cloud to be seen—you were filling the ears of all 
who could be brought to listen, with sneers and 
“curses against God and Christ and Scripture as 
so many demonstrated delusions. Especially, you 
were not more sure of your own existence than 


32 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


you were of the non-existence of a personal God. 
So you would have your hearers think. So you 
thought yourself. But what do we hear now! 
The sky has darkened, the wind has veered and 
risen to a gale, the vessel has lost both masts and 
rudder, and now the waves are charging on the 
wreck in exulting thunders, like long lines of 
foaming battle steeds following each other in end- 
less succession quite to the horizon, and bathing 
with their white foam the whiter faces of despair- 
ing men and women. Volney thinks it death. It 
will turn out to be only death’s next neighbor. 
But he does not know it as yet, and—is it possi- 
ble? the philosopher on his knees! Is it possible? 
this same confident atheist calling on God for 
help, with streaming eyes and uplifted hands 
exclaiming, ‘‘O my God, my God, what shall I 
do!” 

Ah, Monsieur Volney, you have made a nota- 
ble discovery. You were not quite as sure of 
no-God as you thought. Deep down in your 
soul all this while, even while your unbelief was 
loudest, was hiding a subtile faith. ‘The storm 
that has torn off the hatches and lit up the dark 
hold suddenly with its vivid lightning, has torn 


off also the covering from your soul and given 


you a flash of information in regard to its con- 
tents which surprises yourself—not me. 


Ng Sa a a a I ont 


eige ts 


REAL UNBELIEF? 46 


But one need not wait for death to be at hand 
in order to test the solidity of his unbelief. Let 
him suppose himself about to die, and after hav- 
ing summoned around himself by a strong effort 
of imagination the solemn circumstances of the 
last hour, and put himself as nearly as possible 
amid the views and feelings that belong to such 
a time, let him then look to see what his mind 
contains. \ Is: it) disbelief, or even! unbelief? 
Would he not, as a matter of safety, rather die a 
Christian than an unbeliever? I am persuaded 
that in most cases the man would feel compelled 
to say yes to such a question—showing that at 
the bottom of his heart he really thinks religion 
to have in its favor a balance of likelihood. ‘The 
chances are for it rather than against it. Here is 
faith—faith at its smallest, if you please, but still 
faith. Just as soon as one views the claims of 
religion as on the whole more likely to be true 
than not, he is entitled to cry out with the man 
in the gospel, ‘‘Lord, I believe; help thou my 
‘unbelief.’ He believes, though his mind is still 
full of doubts and cobwebs. ‘‘ The spider takes 
hold with her hands, and is in the king’s palace.”’ 

It is a matter of experience that it is quite 
safe for the friends of religion to assume the 
existence of a subtile intellectual faith in it, 
hiding at the bottom of the hearts of most of our 


Tempted to Unbelief. 5 


34 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


professed unbelievers. We need not be at the 
trouble of always arguing with them. We may 
largely talk with them as if they are quite aware 
that the probabilities are in favor of religion. 
They are aware of it after a certain latent fashion. 
We have only to sound them prudently in order 
to see it; have only to help them to look into 
their own minds, as if from a death-bed, to ena- 
ble them to see it for themselves. And when 
they find that in such a case they would rather, 
on the whole, risk themselves with Christianity 
than with unbelief, they are to regard themselves 
as having a real, though it may be a very feeble 
faith. ‘hey should at once dismiss themselves 
from the class of atheists or infidels into that of 
believers. he name fairly belongs to them. 
They should be disabused of the idea which so 
many, if not most, have, that one cannot properly 
be said to believe unless he £zows—unless he has 
conviction without any doubts. And calling 
things by their right names, they should at once 
proceed to do with their discovery as a certain 
man did with his. 

He floated on a deep lake, and sought to see 
what lay at the bottom. But the breeze was 
strong, the waters ran wrinkles in every direc- 
tion, and lights and shadows chased each other 
in a thousand confusing ways. One day, how- 


eee 


REAL UNBELIEF? 35 


ever, when the western sun was slanting its rays 
at him through the calm water, he saw the far 
bottom as he had never seen it before; and from 
among the pebbles a great jewel sent up to his 
eye its splendid gleam. He lost no time in 
bringing it to the surface. It became his capital. 
The capital gradually enlarged itself in the course 
of business, and now he is living like a prince by 
means of the treasure that lay hid so long beneath 
the waves. 


The soul from out its window looks, 
And with the greatest ease 

An outward world of sky and earth 
Blazing with sunlight sees. 


But when it turns to look within, 
From all that outward glare, 

The room is dark, and Titan-forms 
May lie in hiding there. 


For years he never saw his face, 
How could his eyes discern? 
Forth from their sockets could they go, 
Then backward on him turn? 


But once, as o’er a spring he bent, 
A fountain still and clear, 

He saw at length that stranger self 
Beneath the glass appear. . 


Surprised he saw—he had not thought 
Such features his before. 

Alas! what forms within may hide, 
To fright us evermore! 


36 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


IV. 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 


Tire business of investigation is one in which 
every person is almost constantly engaged. Who 
passes an hour of waking time without trying to 
answer to himself questions of various degrees of 
consequence ? 

In most cases the mental process is very ee 
mal; no scientific names or rules are used in con- 
neétion with it; it consists of a succession of half- 
unconscious steps which would at once take 
fright at such dignified names as logic and prem- 
ises and argument. And yet the thing done is 
veal investigation, as truly so as anything that 
bears the name of Locke or Newton. It is an 
attempt, step after step, to find out thesrneh.;-) 1t 
is a process in which the mind busies itself in 
trying to discover what are facts: it may be 
concerning pleasure, or business, or politics, or 
science, or religion. 

For the successful prosecution of this univer- 
sal business many rules have been laid down. 
Perhaps the most widely accepted of these rules 
is that which requires an zmpartial mind in the 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 37 


inquirer. He must be thoroughly in equipoise. 
He must be as willing to answer his question nega- 
tively as affirmatively; must not choose to find the 
truth on the one side rather than on the other. If 
this is not possible, if he has preferences and 
cannot but have them, he must be careful not to 
allow them any influence in collecting, estima- 
ting, and balancing rival evidences. His judg- 
ment must be divorced from his feelings. He 
must be as nearly as possible an intellectual 
machine. It is claimed that the due observance 
of this rule will do more toward bringing the 
mind to a just decision than anything else. 

Still it is not a rule well kept. It is found in 
practice a hard matter to keep our partialities 
from influential intercourse with our investiga- 
ting reason. They largely break quarantine. 
They largely give the cue to our intellectual 
faculties—put leading questions, hold leading 
strings, build tramways for the trains of thought 
to run upon toward the favorite verdict. Seta 
father to investigating charges against a favorite 
son, a Roman hierarchist to inquiring into the 
rights of his order, a polygamist to deciding on 
the laws concerning marriage: how sure are the 
feelings to take sides in force before a single 
intellectual point is made, and then to stand 
whispering at the ear of the understanding through 


38 LEMPLED LOCONBELIGL 


the whole course of the argument! The man 
does not make formal objection to the rule requi- 
ring impartiality ; he does not mean or wish to 
come to an unfair conclusion: he means and 
wishes to find a ¢vwe verdict, and to find it, if 
possible, on the side of his interests. | 
Undoubtedly this is, in general, a very un- 
philosophical and harmful way of conduéting 
investigation. Our feelings have no general 
commission to blaze the trees for our journey 
through the forest, to pilot our sailing through 
beclouded seas. Yet there is at least one great 
exception. We may properly conduct an inquiry 
into the truth of Theism and Christianity under 
the guidance of a strong wish to find them true. 
Nay, we should do vast injustice to ourselves, to 
society, and to the fundamental principles of 
human nature, by approaching these do¢trines in 
any other way. ‘They are so useful. ‘They are 
so necessary. ‘Their removal from the world 
would bring so much of peril and loss, that the 
law of self-preservation demands them for the 
individual, the family, and society at large. Un- 
belief is so impolitic and harmful a thing that no 
person ought to be willing, or, with his eyes well 
open on the facts, caz be willing to have it. We 
could hardly do a more unreasonable and suicidal 
thing than to be willing to have it proved to us 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 39 


that God is a mistake and the Scriptures a fable. 
There is no danger of its being done; but granting 
for the moment that it could be, it would be the 
height of pra¢tical folly for any one to allow 
himself to be convinced by the proofs, if any 
amount of precaution and effort could prevent it. 
So, prior to all formal inquiry, a man can, with 
the greatest good sense, say to all attacking athe- 
ists and infidels, ‘‘I do not want to be an unbe- 
liever, and I do not mean to be such if I can help 
it. I shall do my very best to establish my mind 
in the faith of my fathers, the current faith of the 
civilized world. You may depend upon it that 
I will not be without a God and a message from 
him if any amount of pains can prevent. I shall 
make it a point to find true, if I fairly can, what 
is SO necessary to myself and society.” 

I justify that man with my whole heart. 
So did ancient Plutarch, who wrote, ‘‘ You would 
sooner build a city in the air than cause a state to 
subsist without religion.”’ So did the French 
Directory when it gave as the order of the day, 
“ Terror and all the virtues.” So did Byron in his 
notable confession of the disadvantages of unbe- 
lief for two worlds. And so, unless my own 
experience is at fault, unbelievers of the more 
thoughtful and moral class are very apt to do in 
their frank moments. Ask almost any man of 


40 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


sense and observation, putting him on his honor 
and c science to speak frankly, ask him whether 
he does not think that a real, solid, practical 
faith in God and the Bible would, on the whole, 
be a better thing for his son and all connetted 
with him than unbelief would be—what would 
be the answer? He might not speak it, but ere a 
moment had elapsed, he would think it. “ Prac- 
tically,’’ says he to himself, ‘‘it is better that my 
son have a God and a religion. He sometimes 
shows tendencies that alarm me; and whatever 
may be the abstra¢t truth in these matters, I 
cannot conceal from myself that for him to pro- 
foundly believe is likely to be followed by better 
results to himself and all within his sphere of 
influence, not excluding even the brutes, than for 
him not to believe.”’ 

So feel most parents. ‘Though unbelieving 
themselves, they do not care to have their fami- 
lies so. It were a threat against their future. 
They foresee not merely that, as living in a Chris- 
tian land, unbelief would be a great social disad- 
vantage to them, inviting distrust and alienation 
from the best part of the community, and seri- 
ously interfering with worldly prospects, but that 
it would remove salutary restraints from the char- 
acter, and promote waywardness, insubordination, 
and all downward-looking tendencies. A breeder 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 41 


of mischief and trouble for a man in this world, 
what could it do for him in another (if there be 
another) save to harm him, perhaps fatally? 
Yes; as a matter of prudence and promise and 
comfort, parents would prefer to have their chil- 
dren believe. 

So feels a prudent young man when, stepping 
out into the world to become.a candidate for its 
honors or gains, he is invited to cast off the faith 
of his fathers and set himself in antagonism to 
Christendom. What will he gain by the step? 
Greater sense of freedom in taking wrong courses? 
Well, is this really a gain?—a gain to have the 
road cleared and the brakes taken off for a down- 
ward rush? Will he really be able to possess him- 
self so fully with unbelief as to feel thoroughly 
safe and comfortable in such a descent? What 
will he lose? First and most, character; then 
friends, repute, openings in life; for what family 
or situation of trust or emolument in a Christian 
land will open to him the more readily from his 
being known as an atheist or infidel? He is 
likely to suffer in morals, in happiness, in stand- 
ing, in prospects for this world and the next (if 
there be a next) by becoming an unbeliever. 
Surely it would be greatly against his interests. 
Shall he drive them all, a reluGtant herd, to a 
slaughter-house? No. 


Tempted to Unbelief, 6 


42 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF, 


So feels the community—when it takes time 
to think. It feels that general unbelief would 
sacrifice it generally. With God and the Bible, 
away goes the Sabbath, away the sanctuary, away 
the ministry, away the Sabbath-school, and fam- 
ily religious instruction, and all the religious lit- 
erature; away the sense of a Divine eye on the 
life and the heart ; away the sense of responsibil- 
ity and a future state; away the hope of heaven 
and the fear of hell; away, before long, even the 
very recognition of moral distin¢tions—for the 
same sort of reasoning that sets aside the Bible 
and God is just as good against the foundation of 
common morality. It is hard enough now, with 
the instructions and hopes and fears and strenu- 
ous upward pressure of Christian institutions, to 
resist the downward tendency of society ; how the 
waters would rush and roar were the dams quite 
taken away! As ‘Franklin said to Paine, “If 
mankind is so bad with religion, what would it 
be without !’ Whataplace! Value flees express 
from lands, houses, fisheries, factories, stores— 
everything. Desirable families move out; none 
but undesirable families move in. Each genera- 
tion of young people is worse than its predecessor. 
Laws and magistrates have to strain to keep such 
a community in order, and, after all, strain in vain. ~ 
For unbelief means no-religion, and no-religion 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 43 


means anarchy or despotism. The place becomes 
a byword and a hissing; a Nazareth without a 
Holy Family, a Sodom from which to flee with- 
out looking behind. Oh for at least a Paganism 
for the reprobate place that neither fears God nor 
regards. man—the reprobate place that knows too 
much to have many gods, and too little to have 
One ! 

So much from the standpoint of sensible and 
observing men. From that of the Christian, who 
supplements the information derived from con- 
sciousness, observation, and ‘‘ Reigns of Terror’? 
by the testimony of the Scriptures, much more 
must be said. We must say that unbelief sacrifices 
enormously the interests of men for two worlds; 
that it is by far the most comprehensive and fun- 
damental disaster that ever befalls men. This 
will appear if we notice in some detail what great 
things a positive and influential faith can do 
for us; for the consideration of these will show us 
what a great evil that unbelief is which makes 
such great benefits impossible, as a black, univer- 
sal vacuum makes impossible a green world and 
the spangled heavens. And this showing will 
account to unbelievers for the urgency with which 
some Christians seek to discourage unbelief. We 
- think we see in it the parent of infinite mischief. 
And mere doubters are obliged to confess that our 


44 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


thought say be just, and should govern them- 
selves accordingly. 

We find ourselves assailed by three immense 
armies—errors, sins, and sorrows. How shall this 
triple enemy be overcome? ‘This is the great 
question of human life. Answers are not want- 
ing. Saysone, ‘‘I will tell you how to put down 
errors; especially, how to be safe from the worst 
of them, the more pernicious errors in religion. 
Enlarge and culture your mind, store it with use- 
ful knowledge, bring reason to bear on the cloudy 
question, ventilate it by free discussion, consult 
authorities and geniuses: so you may hope to 
conquer the assailing error.’? Says another, 
‘“ And I will tell you how you may conquer szs. 
Acquaint yourself with the laws of nature, acquire 
enlightened views of self-interest, become familiar 
with the experience of the world as formulated in 
histories and laws, consult your natural instin¢ts 
and conscience: so shall you find yourself able 
to beat off both the sins which have fastened 
upon you and those beginning to assail you with 
their skirmishing van of temptations.’’ Says an- 
other, ‘‘ Hear from me how you may conquer sor- 
vows. Go to divine philosophy and learn stoicism. 
Go to bustling occupation and crowd out the sense 
of trouble. Yes, go, if need be, to pleasure, to 
dissipation, to inebriation even, and drown the 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 45 


sorrows which prudence could not succeed in 
averting, nor philosophy succeed in bearing. So 
conquer afflictions.”’ 

There is yet another witness. Let the Bible 
come upon the stand and testify in answer to the 
question, ‘‘ How does a man overcome the world— 
that is, the assailing evils of it?’ An answer 
comes promptly and strongly: ‘‘’This is the vic- 
tory that overcometh the world, even your Farru. 
It is a practical Christian faith alone that can 
really master the world’s errors, sins, and troubles. 
Here is the quiet force that is to save the harassed 
and ravaged nations. By this paradise may come 
back again—a paradise of truth, of goodness, and 
of joy. With this you may find your way safely 
through all the sophistries of heresies, through all 
the enticements of wickedness, through all afflic- 
tions—though you reckon among them the death 
of the dearest friend you have, and even your own 
death. Let the world’s triple army do its worst ; 
shall I fear for the feeblest real Christian? Nay, 
his faith is the mighty man-at-arms who will 
steadily push on from advantage to advantage till 
the field is cleared of the foe, even of stragglers. 
All grave errors shall fall, all sins shall fall, all 
trials shall fall, yes, even death and hell shall 
fall.”’ Such is the general witness-bearing of the 
Scriptures as to what Faith can do for men. 


46 LZEMPIED TO UNBELIEP. 


But let us itemize this testimony somewhat. 

I. Haith prevents or removes all serious errors in 
religious belief—invariably does so. 

A man comes to a practical faith in the Bible. 
He so believes in it as to enthrone the principle 
of obedience to it in his will. Now can this man, 
by any manner of means, be brought to perma- 
nently accept any fundamental error of religious 
doctrine? Can you make an atheist or an infidel 
of him? Can you shut his eyes on the Deity and 
atonement of Christ, or the necessity of regenera- 
tion by the Holy Spirit, or a future of endless 
rewards and punishments? I care not how un- 
learned and scant in logical faculty he may be, 
nor how many acute errorists expend their soph- 
istries upon him; he is safe. He may not be able 
to utter a word of argument, but he knows. There 
is a holy polarity about him that feels out grave 
errors and recognizes them as such under all dis- 
guises. The Spirit teaches him. ‘‘An unétion 
from the Holy One’’ enables him to know all things 
fundamental. He opens his mouth widely, and 
it is filled. He remembers and tests the promise: 
‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God, and 
it shall be given him.’’ In this way he comes to 
know all things pertaining to life and godliness— 
comes to know them as soon as it is important 
for him to know them. If there is any religious 


_ 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 47 


point that does not clear up to him, it is because 
it is not important to 42, or because he will be 
protected from any evil that would naturally arise 
from ignorance or mistake in regard to 1t—accord- 
ing to the promise that ‘‘all things shall work to- 
gether for good to them that love God.’? What 
with the prevention of mistake, or of the harm 
that naturally comes from it, all the fiery darts of 
heresy and misbelief that destroy so many will 
play on him in vain. His shield of faith quenches 
them. ‘Talents might fail to do this, as they have 
often done; education might fail, as it has often 
failed; but a simple, practical faith in Christ is 
sure to shelter him to the end. Have you never 
seen some humble Christian beset with shrewd 
and plausible cavils night and day from his fam- 
ily and business relations, and yet making no 
more account of them than the rock does of the 
pattering rain? Cease to wonder; he is being 
‘‘kept by the power of God, through faith, unto 
salvation.’? 

Now conceive of a man who has already fallen 
into grave religious errors, but nevertheless such 
as are not inconsistent with a general intelleétual 
belief in the Scriptures. At last he is brought to 
turn that barren faith into a praétical one. He 
sets himself to doing as he believes. What fol- 
lows? Does he go on holding that God is merci- 


48 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


ful without being just ; that man is not by nature 
as well as practice a miserable sinner; that no 
atonement has been made, or that none is needed; 
that a good, moral life is all that is wanted to 
carry a man freely through the gates of heaven— 
does he still harbor a single one of these old er- 
rors? Snap go the flukes of their anchor. See, 
they are drifting helplessly out to sea, and will 
soon be out of sight. No parting salute even 
from the harbor-master. He is glad to see them 
departing. He is against them without argu- 
ment. ‘They part company with him from mere 
uncongeniality with the new man in Christ Jesus. 
The old reasonings and objections which once 
held them and him together suddenly become 
ropes of sand. You hear no more of them from 
the time when, with a broken heart, he carries his 
sins to Jesus and devotes himself to a Christian 
life. Spring has come, and the winter garments 
are shed as a matter of course. ‘ell it in all the 
country round—the evil spirits have gone out of 
the man; they are cast out, never to return. And 
a simple, working faith in the Bible is the mighty 
exorcist, doing with wonderful ease what no elo- 
quent arguments and natural light of reason or 
education had ever succeeded in doing. Invaria- 
bly this is so. No man practically believes with- 
out at once serving a writ of ejectment on all his 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 49 


grave heterodoxies. Doing the will of God, he 
knows the doctrine. And the Scriptures guaran- 
tee that this victory over error that begins so aus- 
piciously shall advance till it becomes perfeét—if 
not in this world, surely in the next. 

Il. Fatth breaks the dominion of every sin at once, 
and finally destroys tt—invariably does so. 

Particular sins are sometimes broken off by 
means of other principles. Regard to his family 
or to his health may recover a man from drunk- 
enness. A wish for comforts and honors may 
cure a man of his indolence. Respeétable society 
may lead a man to quit his profanity. And the 
victory in each case may be thorough and perma- 
nent. But there is only one thing that breaks 
the sceptre of every sin at a single blow—indeed, 
that breaks the sceptre of any sin as such. It is 
an influential religious faith. ‘The moment this 
enters the soul it overthrows at one stroke the au- 
thority of all sins whatsoever; is sure to do it, 
and to go on doing till the foe is extin@. It may 
be some time before that easily-besetting sin 
ceases to be committed. It may return at inter- 
vals for years, and be very troublesome. But it is 
a dethroned monarch. It is no longer an allowed 
habit. The man “‘cannot sin (habitually) because 
he is born of God.’’ His new-born love to Christ 
and holiness, the indwelling Spirit, his living 


Tempted to Unbelief. / 


50 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


faith in the promises and threats of Scripture, all 
forbid. Nor does his faith stop at this introduc- 
tory conquest. After having broken up the em- 
pire of sin in all its varieties, it proceeds by de- 
grees to take away its very life. It starves and 
bleeds it daily. By little and little, or by great 
and great, it beats the prostrate and panting foe 
to death. At last vi€tory becomes extermination. 
See, the enemy is small as the dust of the summer 
threshing-floor. And the man with a heart wholly 
‘purified by faith’? leaves the conquered world 
to ‘‘receive an inheritance among them that are 
sanctified by faith that is in Me.’’ Mere con- 
science and natural religion never do this; an 
enlightened sense of self-interest never does it ; 
nor does example, human authority, pride of char- 
acter, or anything of the sort. A mightier con- 
queror is needed. ‘‘ This is the victory that over- 
cometh the world, even your faz¢h.” 

Ill. Fazth sweetens the bitterness of all trials in 
this world, takes away all their power to injure, and 
even turns them into positive benefits; and in the 
world to come substitutes for eternal misery eternal 
happiness—iuvariably does so. 

Plainly, the weight of every trial is lessened 
to one who has learned to trust the providence of 
God. And some do not need to be told that there 
is an amount of lifting power in this trust which 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 51 


belongs to no other principle known to them. 
They have tested the matter, and know that an 
affectionate conviction that God reigns helps one to 
bear up under trouble as neither business nor com- 
pany nor the consolations of philosophers can do. 
We admit that these can do something for us; but 
their help is very insufficient and unreliable. And 
then they can never totally take away the power 
to harm froma single trial. They can never make 
a single trouble fight for one instead of against 
him. Who has ever heard of a worldly nostrum 
that dared pretend itself able to ‘‘ make all things 
work together for good’’ to him who would give 
it a fair trial? But a praétical Christian faith 
does dare to claim as much as this—claims to do 
it, not now and then, but in the case of every man 
in whom it exists, and in the case of every adver- 
sity, however grim and even destructive in its 
natural temper. From the moment you become 
a true Christian, all bitters become sweets to you, 
all poisons become food, all enemies become 
friends. Nothing shall by any means hurt you ; 
everything shall by all means bless you. The 
whole dreary kingdom of adversity, wet with 
tears and vocal with groans, and from which men 
shrink away as they ought to shrink from sin— 
this whole great realm shall not contain a single 
sorrow which, constrained by your living faith, 


IS? TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


shall not cry out to you, ‘‘The blessing of the 
Lord be upon you; we bless you in the name of 
the Lord.’’ Is it the last sickness of your dearest 
friend? He is smitten, he pines, he fades, he is 
gone. So angry-looking is the trial, and so fierce- 
ly he wields his glittering blade, you fear that he 
is about to 42/7 you. And he might, but for your 
faith. As it is, he isa mastered enemy—nay, a 
thorough-going friend. ‘‘God bless thee,’’ he 
says; and verily thou shalt be blessed. Despite 
all his rough and angry ways, he will, for faith’s 
dear sake, work in you ‘‘the peaceable fruit of 
righteousness,’’? and work for you an * 
and eternal weight of glory.”’ 

It is one thing to bear up well under trials; 
it is another and more glorious thing to rejoice in 
them. ‘This latter is the privilege of the more 
devout Christian believer. His strong faith gives 
him songs in the night—songs even on account of 
the night. Say it is the night of death that is 
shutting down around him. He watches the 
shadows deepen and knows that the end is nigh. 
Is he afraid? Is he merely calm? Look, faith 
takes full inspiration, draws herself up to her 
full queenly stature, looks upward. Star after 
star comes out on the jetty concave, cluster after 
cluster, galaxy after galaxy, till the arch is ablaze 
with heavenly hopes and promises. 


exceeding 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING. 53 


“© glorious hour! O blest abode! 
I shall be near and like my God.” 

‘To depart and be with Christ; which is far 
bettern/ia9) lo. die 1s. 'cain.’” »* ©. death), where 
is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory ?”’ 
so ‘‘death is swallowed up in victory;’’ and the 
dying man, with strong heart and feeble voice 
and radiant face, sings praises, and blesses God 
for the privilege of dying. 

see what faith can do for one! Uncommon 
stupidity may enable him to die like a brute; 
uncommon faith can enable him to die—shall I 
say like a hero? Nay, in the spirit of a transla- 
tion. The world, in the form of its last and 
keenest sorrow, is dragged at his chariot wheels 
as they go up: and the victory that overcometh 
is his faith. What but faith can overcome in 
this manner? In thousands on thousands of cases 
it has won such triumphs; where is the other 
principle among us that has done it in one? 

A man begins to conquer error, sin, and sor- 
row when he begins to exercise a true Christian 
faith. As years pass, this vitory widens and 
brightens; for the path of the just is as the shi- 
ning light, that shines more and more unto the 
perfect day. The viétory becomes complete at 
the death-bed, which is the greatest and most 
conclusive battle-field of the whole war. ‘There 


54 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


views brighten, piety ripens, and comforts swell, 
whatever may be the outward appearance, with 
a rapidity before unknown. As the last breath 
is being drawn, the work of years is done; and 
faith, just on the point of being transfigured into 
sight, summons to herself tenfold energy, and 
drags out under the light of the opening heaven 
all remaining errors, sins, and sorrows, and 
despatches them at a blow. In a moment the 
transition is from one who knows in part to one 
who knows even as he is known, from a very 
sinful man to a spirit of the just made perfect, 
from terrestrial pain to celestial bliss. By one 
great step, as if from continent to continent, the 
viGtory of faith over all the world’s evils is 
complete. 

See what, according to the Scriptures, a 
Christian faith can do for men. J/¢ can conquer the 
world. But in different Christians faith appears 
in different statures. In one it is a giant, and in 
another a dwarf. And so the victory of one 
shines on the eye of acquaintances like an Aus- 
terlitz, while that of another is but a ‘Trenton. 
Examples of the last sort are of course more 
numerous; but the more illustrious ones are ever 
coming to our knowledge. Biographies, obitua- 
ries, and our own eyes show them by hundreds 
and hundreds. Behold men and women, and 


LOOK BEFORE LEAPING 55 


even little children, of whom the world is not 
worthy—some whose names are historical, and 
many whose names after a little will shine only 
in God’s Book of Remembrance—marching along 
their highways of spiritual victory; and now let 
us open widely our eyes and gaze on the Glory 
as it advances from dawn to sunrise and onward 
to the high noon of death and heaven. What 
have we to say? Does not our whole soul declare 
that there is no victory won on earthly plains 
which can for a moment be compared with this— 
none so great, none so beautiful, none so desirable 
for ourselves, among all chronicled by historians, 
or sung by poets, or coveted by the beplumed and 
bestarred sons of pride and ambition? And this 
superlative victory of some is, according to the 
Bible, within reach of all. 

But unbelief is the negation of this grand and 
comprehensive victory. It suppresses it in ad- 
vance. It reaches forward with its long spear 
and slays it while yet in the womb of the possi- 
ble. Of course a Christian cannot but look upon 
unbelief as inexpedient. Nay, he holds it the 
deadly foe of mankind. He holds it a slayer of 
souls and of immortalities. He holds it worse 
than the worst poison that ever laid men in 
graves. With these views he cannot but be dis- 
mayed to see it getting entertainment in so many 


56 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


quarters under specious names of Free Thought 
and even science; cannot but seize every oppor- 
tunity of smiting it with the sword of his mouth 
and of his pen. 

And it would do no harm if unbelievers would 
ask themselves whether they can grove that these 
Scriptural views of the inexpediency of unbelief 
are not correct. 


en 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. 57 


Ve 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. 


CREDULITY is a common fault. Almost every 
one is apt to receive on insufficient evidence 
what he wishes to have true. How readily 
stories to the prejudice of an enemy are be- ° 
lieved ! 

And it cannot be denied that, within the sphere 
of religion, multitudes are quite too easy of faith. 
The heathen who worships his block of wood, 
the Moslem who reveres a dissolute and bloody 
robber as first of prophets, the Mormon who sees 
inspiration through the black opacity of Joseph 
Smith—on what a mere nothing do hundreds of 
millions of such men rest their strong faith! Nay, 
we are sometimes amazed to see how easily per- 
sons who have had the best advantages of Chris- 
tian lands can be led to embrace some gross error. 
Mere flecks and shadows of plausibility, not to 
say empty guesses that ring hollow under our 
knuckles, are found sufficient to entice their con- 
fidence away from ancient doétrines which are 
grounded like the everlasting hills. They are not 
unaptly represented by the fabled dog that stood 


Tempted to Unbelief. 8 


58 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


with closed eyes and open mouth, ready to swal- 
low anything which the passer-by had a mind to 
sweeten a little and cast in. 

Yes, it is plain that many believe with too great 
ease. But is it not also plain that many believe 
with too great difficulty? Just let a dottrine (po- 
litical, scientific, or religious) to which we are 
disinclined be put upon its proof before us, and 
we at once become very nice and exacting critics; 
' and if our conviétions are at last carried, it is 
only after a display of perhaps double the evi- 
dence we would have required and thought ample 
in support of a pleasing doétrine. Just let a duty 
that we dislike call for recognition, and we at 
once become exceedingly hard to be convinced of 
its claims, and perhaps ask several times as much 
evidence for it as we would have asked had the 
duty been of an agreeable sort. We turn every 
way to find objections and excuses. Arguments . 
on the one side are made the least of ; arguments 
on the other side are made the most of. Mere 
presumptions are magnified into demonstrations 
on the one hand; and on the other quasi-demon- 
strations are dwarfed into presumptions. If un- 
belief cannot be sustained on general grounds we 
look about, unconsciously perhaps, for something 
special to ourselves and our circumstances to fall 
back upon. ‘‘’This may be the duty of others,’’ I 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. 55 


say, ‘‘ but my case is peculiar. Doubtless they are 
bound to be contented, forgiving, liberal, well-in- 
formed, public-spirited. If I were situated as they 
are I would not hesitate. But I have so many 
needs, disabilities, provocations, cares, which 
they have not, that what is binding on them is 
not binding on me.’’ So we argue. We really 
refuse to believe in our duty except on proofs 
absolutely overwhelming. The largest ship of 
war, if not the entire war-navy of the world, 
must bear down upon us before we will surrender. 
This is totally unjustifiable. It is against all our 
instincts of fair dealing; against all respectable 
logic and moral science. Just as soon as there 
appears more probability for than against, faith 
is under bonds both to reason and conscience to 
appear in such degree as to decide the conduét. 

I knew a good man who doubted the reality 
of his own piety. He sought for evidence of it. 
Now be reasonable, man, and content yourself with 
something less than a Waterloo. But no; feeling 
that piety was all-important, that its absence 
meant destruction and its presence heaven, he 
felt that he could not be too sure that he possessed 
it. So mere probabilities were of no account to 
him—mere blades of grass, where ancient oaks 
were wanted. Unless he could have an oak staff 
‘tall as the mast of some great admiral,’’ he 


60 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


would not take a single step toward comfort. No 
matter that he was consciously trying to shape 
both life and heart by the Bible and conscience, 
that he was a man of devoutness and prayer, 
that he loved good things and hated their oppo- 
sites, it all went for nothing. 

‘Oh, for something to make doubt impossible! 
There are so many deceptions. Oh, for some wrest- 
ling geometry to conquer all my doubts as if so 
many triangles! ‘The heart is such a dark abyss. 
Oh, for some blazing sun toshoot athwart the gloom! 
Satan is sometimes such an angel of light. Oh, 
that I might even look into the Book of Life and 
find my name or that some angel would come 
and tell me that he has seen it there!”’ 

This was his way of thinking and feeling. 
Did I blame him for wishing to be as sure as 
possible in a matter of so much consequence? 
By no means. Only for saying, in effect, that he 
would have complete demonstration or nothing; 
not for wanting assurance of hope, but for not 
allowing rational probability to give him such 
assurance. This was trampling under foot the 
first principles of reasoning. In his case it proved 
to be almost suicide. ‘The hypercritical, exces- 
sively exacting, man became unhealthy in his 
whole tone of mind to the verge of insanity. He 
was insane in his treatment of evidence. 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. 61 


I knew a man who refused to believe anything 
good of his fellow-men till he was compelled to 
do so. He believed ill of them readily enough. 
Any unsavory report his faith went out to meet 
as a vulture speeds to carrion: But a good report 
had to go in search of him; and when he was 
found it was in a castle, with drawbridge up and 
portcullis down, and ‘‘get in if you can”? in- 
scribed on every bristling tower and battlement. 
Suspicion was king. Objeétions were the order 
of the day. Men must be assumed guilty till 
they are proved innocent. And proof of inno- 
cence must be iron clad—something that will 
_ Stand unlimited pounding, and will carry every- 
thing before it. ‘To be sure he would have been 
sorry to be himself judged in the same manner. 
He would have thought himself hardly dealt by. 
He would have been; society cannot endure such 
behavior. The man who perpetrates it is con- 
sidered a porcupine and a nuisance. So I €xpos- 
tulated with him. 

‘What! no good opinion of your neighbor till 
it is pressed out of you by a superincumbent moun- 
tain of evidence! Do you not see that the prin- 
ciple on which you proceed is both untolerated 
and intolerable? If you meet a man whose charac- 
ter is so resplendent and self-proving as to take 
captive your faith at sight, in the manner of a re- 


62 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


sistless giant, it certainly is matter for rejoicing; 
but reason and the necessities of life, as well as 
charity, require that you yield confidence to men 
in general on something less than the sun shining 
in his strength. Faith must go with the balance 
of probability. You are bound to accept such 
evidence in favor of your fellows as the important 
affairs of life are wont to be conduéted on; such 
evidence as that on which’ men daily risk health, 
repute, fortune, life, and empires.”? 

Here is a servant whose name is Thomas. 
Let us suppose that he has lived with his Master 
some years; that during that time he has in many 
ways proved the excellent character of that Mas- 
ter, and especially the sureness of His word; that 
he has heard Him say distin@tly that He should 
die, and rise again the third day after; that he 
has known Him do many wonderful things, quite 
as wonderful as His own rising from the dead 
would be; also that he has had a long and famil- 
iar acquaintance with ten fellow-servants of his, 
enough to assure him of their general capacity 
and trustworthiness as witnesses; that the Master 
has died according to predi€tion, and that he has 
just been told by the ten, as well as by others, 
that the dead is alive, and has been seen and con- 
versed with by themselves. Does he believe this 
very capital evidence? Nothing of the sort. On 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. : 63 


the contrary, he flatly refuses to grant faith to 
anything short of two sorts of demonstration, ocu- 
lar and tangible, and says, ‘‘Unless I can see 
Jesus for myself, and put my finger in the print 
of the nails, and thrust my hand into his side, I 
will not believe.’ Perhaps he prides himself on 
his caution, thinks himself a philosopher, looks 
down on his fellow-servants as so many weaker 
specimens of human nature. If he does, we no 
iore share his views than his Master is said to 
have done. ‘‘Blessed are they who have not 
seen, and yet have believed.’’ Society could not 
stand the strain of such a principle as Thomas’ 
skepticism proceeds on. It is a piece of logical 
“extravagance and absurdity. Before the testi- 
mony of those ten fellow-servants had died away 
on the ear he should have cast his unbelief to the 
winds. 

I knew an agnostic. He had not faith in the 
Bible, or even in God. Why? Well, he in effect 
demanded that evidence in favor of these, if it 
exists, should present itself unsought; and so he 
had never sought for it. Or that the evidence 
should open its full force to him ata single glance 
as he ran by on his business or pleasure; and so a 
running glance was all he had given. Or that 
the evidence should not require such attention 
and candor and thoroughness as are exacted in 


64 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


settling all other important questions ; and so it 
happened that he really gave far less carefulness 
and thoroughness of thought to the subject of God 
and his revelation than to almost any other mat- 
ter of confessed consequence. Or that the evi- 
dence should come in upon him like some storm- 
pushed mountain wave upon a reef—that is, over- 
whelmingly, burying all objeCtions and cavils 
fathoms deep beneath its triumphant flood; and 
such overwhelming demonstrations had not yet 
come to him. He would have liked very much 
to have them. He would have liked a miracle or 
two: say, to have the being of God blazoned on 
the arch of the sky—as indeed it is, only the sym- 
bols are not English letters—so as to make unbe- © 
lief impossible; or to have a dead acquaintance 
come back in the robes of the resurrection, with 
the glory of an angelic escort, to certify in plain- 
est Saxon to Jesus of Nazareth. Failing this, he 
would have chosen some sacred calculus, or at 
least some moral science before which the hardi- 
est objector becomes dumb, after whose mighty 
words men speak not again; a logic so convin- 
cing as to stop all mouths, like the Christian 
Judgment-day. Well, I do not blame him for 
liking such magnificent proofs. I would not ob- 
je&t to them myself. But he went so much beyond 
this as to say that he would not believe wethout 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. 6s 


such proofs. ‘‘ Unless,’’ he said, ‘‘I may put my 
finger in the print of the nails, and thrust my 
hand into his side, I will not believe.’’ 

Was this unreasonable? I repeat that it is 
quite natural and reasonable for a man to desire 
absolute certainty in matters of such consequence. 
The Scriptures encourage this desire, and profess 
to point out a way in which the desire may be 
gratified. But this way does not forsake the laws 
of evidence, but rather uses them as a stair by 
which to mount gradually to the heights of cer- 
tainty. Instead of beginning faith in demonstra- 
tion, it begins it in the greater probability, and 
then shows us how to go from strength to strength. 
But this unbeliever demanded to begin faith where 
logically it ends; and declared that he would 
have no faith at all unless he could have it at the 
outset in the form of an empire on which the sun 
never sets. As we have seen in other cases, this 
is flagrant unreason, nay, anti-reason. If, on in- 
quiry, it appeared to him that there is a balance of 
probability, however slight, in favor of God and 
the Scriptures, that unbeliever was as truly bound 
to yield his assent to it, and to aét accordingly, as 
if that balance had been a mountain instead of a 
mole-hill, a sun instead of a firefly. ‘This is the 
universally admitted canon of logic. Its use in 
all wise conduct of affairs is universal. Refusal 


Tempted to Unbelief, 9 


66 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


to use it would disorganize society and ruin most 
of our sciences. Out of the domain of the pure 
mathematics, all our scientific facts and principles 
rest their entire weight on a balance of probabil- 
ity. Does not the sort of proof that underlies all 
weightiest matters of private or public concern, 
from the fate of empires downward, and which is 
the foundation of science itself, and which con- 
fessedly binds the reason and conscience in all— 
does not this sort of proof also bind reason and 
conscience in the great religious questions ? 

The degree of guilt involved in a refusal of 
faith to sufficient evidence, depends partly on the 
degree of evidence refused, and partly on the 
motive that prompts the refusal. We are told 
that all his fellow-disciples, and other most relia- 
ble persons, assured Thomas of the resurreétion; 
also that the miracles and prediétions of Jesus 
had given the best of reasons for expecting that 
event. From these premises we cannot but say 
that the unbeliever had far more than sufficient 
warrant for believing. This makes heavily 
against him. But, on the other hand, it must 
be considered that a leading reason why Thomas 
declined to believe may have been his very trem- 
bling eagerness to have the resurrection true. 
He may have felt that it was almost too good a 
thing to happen, too gigantic and sublime a 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. 67 


piece of good fortune for such a sinner to fall in 
with. He feared disappointment, and perhaps 
thought he could hardly endure the shock, if, 
after counting on a living Christ, he should find 
only a dead one. ‘This may have led to his 
extreme caution; and the conjeéture finds sup- 
port in what is told us elsewhere of the very 
strong attachment of Thomas to his Master—an 
attachment once expressed in the exclamation, 
“Let us also go that we may die with him.” 
So we are disposed to soften our first severe judg- 
ment of Thomas, and to tone it down to the 
gentle rebuke which his Master is said to have 
administered: ‘‘ Blessed are they who have not 
seen, and yet have believed.”’ 

But our Christian principles do not allow us 
to take so mild a view of that agnostic infidel 
and atheist. They teach us that there is no fa@ 
of science that stands out more plainly on the 
face of Nature than does the fa& of a God. They 
teach us that there is no part of profane history, 
much as men rely on it, which is underlain by 
so great and solid a body of proof as are the chief 
facts of Christianity. The weapons of distrust 
and objeétion which would hold against them 
would triumph against every event of conse- 
quence which has not fallen under our own eyes. 
If Jesus did not live and teach and suffer as the 


68 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


Bible says, neither did Julius Czesar live and 
fight and conquer as the “ Commentaries’? say. 
Infidelity, to be consistent, must shake hands 
with universal skepticism; must at least consent 
to walk on all historic ground as on a quagmire 
where one’s footing cannot be counted on fora 
moment. And now, if we proceed to ask for the 
motive which, unknown perhaps to him, led that 
agnostic to say that he would not believe unless 
whole continents and oceans of demonstration 
were flung at him, we get a clear answer from 
the Bible itself: The light was not loved. He 
did not come to it lest his deeds should be re- 
proved. ‘T’he sinful heart with unerring instin¢t 
scented the battle afar off, and garrisoned the 
intelleét against the benevolent hostility which 
came to lay siege to it in the name of religion. 
This is the philosophy of all unbelief as given 
in the Bible. Of couse no believer in the Bible 
can allow himself to think innocent, or less than 
greatly guilty, the man who insists on standing 
out against all evidence for religion that falls 
short of a silencing geometry. 

_ And yet there were some extenuating circum- 
stances in the case of that particular unbeliever. 
He was naturally of a very skeptical turn of 
mind. Depravities of this sort do sometimes run 
in the blood ; and the man’s ancestors for two or 


ee ee en a ee eae - 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. 69 


three generations had been unbelievers in reli- 
gion. And then he was unfortunately brought 
up, though the ward of a nominally Christian 
man. His companions were not carefully looked 
after. His books were not wisely sifted. Certain 
corners of the extensive home library needed to be 
washed with soap and nitre, and did not get what 
they needed. He was never well watned against 
the specious insinuations and sophistries by which, 
in newspapers and magazines and le¢tures, ene- 
mies of religion so largely seek to discredit it, and 
by which new barks are slyly cut loose from their 
anchorage on God and his Word. At last that 
negligent guardian awoke to a sense of his negli- 
gence—awoke too late. It was when the unkept 
young man openly flung away from himself the 
faith of Christendom, when he was no longer held 
back by the restraints of revealed law and sanc- 
tions, when he appeared among the blasphemers 
and profligates of the community, and was plainly 
going down quick into the pit: it was then that 
the wretched guardian lamented that, by a timely 
effort of care and authority, he did not wall up his 
house against the miseries and calamities of un- 
belief. And when he stood by, staff in hand and 
with bowed and silvered head, and heard the now 
mature and petrified skeptic demand of me, as a 
condition of believing in Scripture and God and 


70 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


moral distinétions, some earth-quaking proof that 
could swallow up the whole populous Lisbon of 
his objections in a moment, he blamed Azmself for 
the unreasonableness of the demand almost as 


much as he did the extravagant unbeliever. And — 


he blamed both heavily. How could he do oth- 
erwise, and yet echo the Book that says, ‘‘ The 
fool hath said in his heart, there is no God,’’ and 
“Tf any man will do His will, he shall know of 
the doétrine, whether it be of God, or whether I 
speak of myself’? ? 

Unbelievers must be reasonable. They must 
consent to take good, sound, moral proof in reli- 
gion, such as the conclusions of every-day life rest 
on, or they will go down to their graves—not far- 
ther—unbelievers. Neither their senses nor their 
mathematics will find opportunity to sit in judg- 
ment on either Christianity or Theism. |In these 
days no man begins faith by ‘‘ putting his finger 
into the print of the nails; or by taking the 
ground, ‘‘ Except I see signs and wonders I will 
not believe.’’ Instead of wishing for impossible 
proofs, let him modestly and faithfully scrutinize 
the actual. As much breath spent in tentative 
prayer for light to a possible God as he has spent 
in asking for such witnesses as resplendent angels, 
or ‘‘ Tekels’’ written with a ghostly hand on the 
four walls of every doubt and obje€tion, would ere 


| 


GIVE ME—GEOMETRY. sj 


this have set his feet ina sure place. ‘The time 
he has spent in obje¢ting, if spent in obeying what 
he knows to be good and true in religion, would 
have scattered his doubts to the winds.) Instead 
of telling, like Thomas, what kind of proof which 
he has not would change his hesitation into con- 
viction, let him give himself to making the most 
of the proof that he has. Let him weigh it as 
honest traders weigh out their commodities. He 
will find it more than enough to meet the de- 
mands of a reasonable logic. At any rate, it is 
all he will ever get. He must rise to an over- 
coming faith on the pinions of just that common- 
place evidence by which he manages his business, 
even in matters of life and death, or he will never 
reach it at all. And it would be hard to show that 
a plan of believing on probable evidence, with the 
necessity of using candor and caution and even 
prayer in collecting and weighing this evidence, 
and of acting according to faith as fast as it is ob- 
tained, accompanied by a warrant of ever-increas- 
ing light and conviétion on this path, would not 
be a better discipline for man in general than any 
other. 


72 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEL. 


VI. 


HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 


His name was ‘Trismegistus. Some thought 
him a magician. He certainly did many won- 
derful things ; but they were only so many won- 
derful tricks. He was a juggler. By long prac- 
tice he had gained a certain sleight of hand which 
enabled him, under certain favorable conditions, 
to impose on the senses of spectators, and to seem 
to do feats which he did not do. He did not really 
eat the fire which he seemed to eat, nor draw out 
of his mouth the endless ribbon which he seemed 
to draw. 

This was a juggler with hands. Others are 
jugglers after quite as surprising a fashion with 
words. We have heard of a man who had such a 
sleight of tongue that he was said to ‘use words 
like a magician.’? He would talk by the hour, 
as flows a river; and while he was talking, his 
hearers heard what sounded amazingly like sense 
and even wisdom ; but when they were by them- 
selves they could not, for the life of them, make 
out anything from what had been said. ‘They 
felt as if they had been witnessing the perform- 


HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. -3 


ances of a juggler—a wonderful one, certainly, 
but still such a dealer with words and ideas as 
Trismegistus was with his hands. 

Fundamental religious truth has sometimes 
had to encounter men of this sort. Such were 
the ancient Greek sophists. ‘They were famous 
for their skill at putting words and ideas together 
so as to seem, for the time being, to prove what- 
ever they chose. Acute, subtle, masters of speech, 
prepared to prove or disprove anything that might 
be desired, delighting in paradoxes, they con- 
founded common people with their linguistic and 
logical tricks, and even seemed to make out by 
their syllogisms that there is nothing right in the 
nature of things, but that whatever seems con- 
venient to a man, that is right to him. Socrates 
arose and exposed them. 

The Schoolmen of the Middle Ages were very 
like these. No foundation in Scripture being 
found for certain Roinish doctrines, it became 
desirable to find a foundation elsewhere. Accord- 
ingly, the Schoolmen set themselves to supply 
what was needed. ‘They would do it by reason 
and—Aristotle. And so at last they came to han- 
dle words and logical forms with vast dexterity ; 
no juggler was ever more astonishing with his 
tricks of hand than they were with their tricks of 
speech : while men listened or read, they seemed 


4 
Tempted to Unbelief. Io 


74 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


to see the most absurd dogmas resting on the 
broad and immutable foundations of science. 
Simple folk were easily confounded. But some- 
times these expert dialeCticians took different 
sides of the same question. Sometimes the same 
man would take different sides at different times. 
Then the simplest had a chance to see that they 
were dealing with jugglers. Could a thing and 
its contradiétion both be true? 

Lawyers, doubtless, are a very useful class of 
men. Iam willing to admit that, in the present 
wicked state of the world, they are a necessity. 
But I once heard one of them say that he thought 
it ‘‘about as easy to prove the false as the true.” 
It is certain that not a few advocates aét as if they 
thought as this man said. They are quite as 
ready to take up on the wrong side of a case as on 
the right. And when they take up on the wrong, 
if they are ingenious and practised pleaders, they 
will use words and ideas so adroitly that a com- 
mon man will feel that they have the right of it— 
until their opponent or the judge exposes the dex- 
terous sophistry. There is not a cause before the 
courts of Christendom so false and absurd that an 
expert advocate cannot give to it a seeming of 
truth with superficial hearers; none so just and 
reasonable that he cannot object to it so plausibly 
as to perplex perhaps nine-tenths of average men. 


axe 


HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. Whe 


He is a nineteenth-century sophist, schoolman, 
juggler, only his jugglery is one of words and 
ideas, instead of hands. He deals in tricks as 
much as Monsieur Houdin—only they are tricks 
of speech and logic. 

Are you sure of history? I once thought my- 
self tolerably so; and perhaps I am not yet quite 
ready to give up all the records of the past. Yet 
a school of destructive historical critics has ap- 
peared which has argued with so much ingenuity 
against the early Greek, Roman, and Hebrew his- 
tory as to unsettle the faith of considerable num- 
bers in all history. Why will not the same sort 
of reasoning that seems to make it doubtful 
whether there was ever a Romulus, or a Troy, or 
a Homer, or a Moses, serve equally well against 
the credibility of all our histories? Common peo- 
ple were dreadfully perplexed by those dexterous 
skeptics. No doubt they perplexed themselves. 
And yet the Roman excavations have a story to 
tell. Schliemann has really found Troy by dig- 
ging; and Gladstone has really found Homer 
without digging. And if one is not quite ripe for 
bidding farewell to all human records quite up to 
the present time, he will be quite likely to find 
Moses and Jesus by reading Whately’s ‘‘ Historic 
doubts concerning the existence of Napoleon Bo- 
naparte.”’ 


76 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


But now I hear a voice of the most positive 
sort: ‘‘’Thank heaven, there is one thing beyond 
dispute. Nobody can make out a plausible case 
against science.’ 

Pray, my friend, in what remote corner of the 
world have you been sleeping the sleep of Van 
Winkle, if not the sleep of the just? Philosophi- 
cal transaCtions are a battle-field. Scarcely a sci- 
entific principle but has had to fight its way to 
recognition through a storm of subtle cavils such 
as sophists and schoolmen and pettifogging law- 
yers have used time out of mind. Every now and 
then a man starts up in opposition to the Newto- 
nian Astronomy, and argues so cunningly as might 
well befog one not well grounded in science. Just 
now we have a man pushing a book against the 
accepted theory of the tides ; and it must be con- 
fessed that, to the average unscientific reader, his 
‘‘demonstrations’? would be likely to make a 
very respectable appearance. The pure mathe- 
matics themselves have metaphysics at the bot- 
tom of them, which enables an adroit mind to 
bring their very axioms into contention; and one 
who knows the mathematical history is hardly 
surprised to find an able man saying that he ‘‘is 
not prepared to say but that there is somewhere a 
world where two and two do not make four.” 
Even the validity of our senses, and the very ex- 


HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 77 


istence of that external nature to which most of 
our sciences relate, have been so craftily talked 
against that the best scholars have been put on 
their mettle to expose the showy sophistries. 

Is it, then, so very surprising that a verbal and 
intellectual jugglery can be used with more or less 
speciousness against the fundamental do¢trines of 
religion, however well proven they may be? If 
everything else that men believe in, and live by, 
and are said to know, can be so cavilled against 
as to disturb and mislead careless and superficial 
thinkers—not excepting even the demonstrable 
geometry itself and the simplest principles of com- 
mon morals—why not the Bible and Jesus and 
rod Po Of course ‘they can. \ Orel can:make a 
smoke about anything, even about the finest and 
whitest statue that ever came from the hand of 
sculptor, or the noblest man that ever came from 
the hand of God, or the whitest and noblest truth 
that ever pointed at earth or heaven. How easily 
one can alter beyond recognition the face of a per- 
son by a little paint judiciously distributed! All 
he has to do is to bring out into relief one or two 
features and throw another two into the back- 
ground, and the disguise is complete. His near- 
est friend passes him in the street without know- 
ing him, especially in the twilight, or when riding 
rapidly by with a preoccupied mind. Just so, by 


78 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


a daub of word-color, or a patch or two of error, 
one may so change truth that it shall seem false- 
hood, and falsehood so that it shall seem truth, to 
one using his eyes carelessly. Some persons have 
gotten such a skill at making these transforma- 
tions that they may well be compared to expert 
and astonishing jugglers. "They impose on others 
with their tricks of tongue or pen as Signor Ca- 
gliostro did with his tricks of hand. ‘They even 
sometimes impose on themselves. Words are like 
glasses. Some glasses wonderfully color and dis- 
tort objects seen through them. Others obscure 
and even wholly conceal, as do various colored 
and smoked panes which strip the sun of its 
beams and the landscape of its loveliness. And 
some, like well-made telescopes and microscopes, 
serve wonderfully to reveal both the earth and 
heavens. And the reason itself is like the eye. 
In a sound state the eye will show things as they 
are. But itis a delicate instrument, liable to be 
deranged by misuse; and when deranged either 
does not see at all, or misrepresents objects, or 
creates optical illusions to which absolutely noth. 
ing answers in nature. So the reason, which 
when sound and soundly used gives sound con- 
clusions, may easily be disordered by misuse, and 
then can no more be relied on to give true results 
than a watch whose wheels have been twisted and 


thie Ce mil 
oop he Cel 


HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 79 


strained by abusive fingers can be relied on to give 
the true time. ‘This was the sort of treatment the 
old sophists and schoolmen gave their reasoning 
faculties ; and it is just what careless and unscru- 
pulous men still give to theirs. They wrest them. 
They try to make them see what does not exist. 
They drag them this way and that to serve a pur- 
pose. Instead of trying to prove what is true, 
they try to prove what they wish. They argue, 
perhaps, for the sake of arguing, to show their 
ingenuity, to gain victories, to further what seems 
their present interest. Such treatment demoral- 
izes reason. It becomes wholly unreliable. And 
when such sleight of mind is employed in reli- 
gious matters, it gives us sometimes such men as 
certain prominent skeptical writers. What are 
they but eminent jugglers, seeming to do what 
they do not, deftly putting together words and 
ideas so as to impose on careless or uninstructed 
people and make them think there is neither Rev- 
elation nor God ? 

Yes, doubtless, the Bible and God can be very 
plausibly and showily argued against. All that 
we need are ingenious men, and unscrupulous 
men, and men whose feelings are strongly enlist- 
ed againts religion. And such were Voltaire and 
Paine and Heine and Strauss, and not a few other 
unbelieving writers and le¢turers. Acute, witty, 


80 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


brilliant, masters in the art of putting things—we 
readily grant them to have been all that. Like 
the Crusaders, we have to confess that there have 
been good men-at-arms even among the infidels. 
They handled their weapons skilfully. And, for 
the most part, they were as unprincipled as they 
were skilful. "They were bad men; and their 
theories were made to order, and made to match. 
They were not troubled with scruples in any di- 
rection ; to a large extent they did not pretend to 
any, either in writing or speaking or living. In 
living they were profligates. This is a fair ac- 
count of most of those free-thinkers whose wri- 
tings form the arsenal of unbelief. Naturally, 
such men dislike exceedingly the idea of being 
under the government of a holy God, and in the 
presence of a message from him so exacting and, 
to them, so threatening as the Christian Scrip- 
tures. ‘Ihe worse men are, and the more they 
have prostituted brilliant parts, the more they 
shrink from the Judgment-day wrapped up in the 
doctrine of God and his Bible; and these men 
shrank from it as the poles do from the equator. 
They hated Christianity. ‘‘Crush the wretch !’ 
wastheir motto. ‘Their pens dripped gall. They 
were just the men to stop at nothing in the art of 
misrepresentation ; just the men to count it a fine 
art, and tax its resources to the utmost. Their 


HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 81 


principles, or rather their want of principles, 
gave them the freedom of the whole horizon of 
venturesomeness and stratagem and falsehood. 
Whatever they could do against religion they 
felt at liberty to do. In fine, they were just the 
men from whom one would expeét feats of the 
most varied and brilliant jugglery, rhetorical and 
logical, in their assaults on religion. 

And we actually find what might have been 
expected. For we find these assailants objeéting 
and arguing in a way which, however plausible 
at first glance, a little reflection shows would be 
equally good against most of our sciences, and 
even the foundations of common morals. Bishop 
Butler has shown that the leading obje¢tions 
against Christianity are quite as good against a 
God in nature; and it would not take so great a 
man as Butler to show that the chief objections to 
a God, as well as the whole style of atheistic ar- 
guing, would serve equally well to discredit such 
things as spirit, a future state, the essential differ- 
ence between right and wrong, and those great in- 
stitutions on which society is based, namely, mar- 
riage, property, civil government. Many leading 
unbelievers have seen this, and have gone all 
lengths with their principles. Of course the plaus- 
ibleness that carries us so far, and ends in plun- 
ging us into such a_pit, is nothing but jugglery. 


Tempted to Unbelief. Toy 


82 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


So one should not conclude against faith on 
account of specious appearances which ingenious 
men have for the time contrived to conjure up 
against it. But he should say, For all that witty 
and caustic Voltaire has said, Theism and Chris- 
tianity may be as gloriously true and provable as 
science itself, or even as the constellations which 
some persons, on the strength of their metaphys- 
ics, have so acutely and kindly informed us have 
no existence save in our thoughts. Nor should 
one conclude against faith because his own 
thoughts are able to suggest to him what forrthe 
time are showy difficulties in its way. You could 
do as much against everything good, wise, fair, 
sacred. Nothing is easier than objecting. An 
acute mind can manage to find fault with any- 
thing beneath the stars, or above them. No 
cause before the courts is so clear and just but 
that some shrewd and wily advocate can befog it, 
and finally, out of the fog, make the better seem 
the worse to unskilled hearers, till his adversary 
or the judge takes the case in hand and exposes 
his sophistries. There is no historical fact so 
widely accepted by the public and so supported 
by the consensus of authors and traditions but 
that some Niebuhr can talk as plausibly against 
it as did Whately against the earth-quaking Cor- 
sican. ‘There is no science, experimental or math- 


HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 83 


ematical, however grounded in proofs and but- 
tressed by the uses and needs of mankind, and 
radiant with the fame of great discoverers, but 
can be dragged to the bar of some Pilate or Caia- 
phas of hypercriticism, and there so beaten and 
spit upon that its best friends shall hardly be able 
to recognize the disfigured king. Nay, even the 
very alphabet of morals and the institutions com- 
monly supposed by decent people to be the postu- 
lates of civilization, are not beyond the peckings 
of kites and ravens of objection and cavil that 
know how to swoop down most gracefully on their 
quarry—witness Materialists, Communists, Free- 
lovers, Nihilists. Do we readily succumb to 
such attacks? or shall we for one moment think 
of allowing that there is really nothing true, or 
capable of being reasonably known as such, in 
all the wide domains of justice, history, science, 
and morals? Must we resign ourselves to such 
a pit of skepticism? God forbid—if these un- 
believers will for a moment allow us to have a 
God. We will still keep something to believe in. 
We will not quite strip ourselves and come on the 
town as intelle¢tual paupers. So when certain 
bright-witted men manage to put things plausi- 
bly against the Bible and God, we need not be in 
a hurry to surrender our city at first summons. 
The case will bear inquiring into. It may be 


34 TEMPTED TO UNBEL/EF. 


only another case of the jugglery so common in 
the world. All is not gold that glitters. The 
beautiful complexion may be due, not to health, 
but to the artist’s skill. So these showy dialettics 
against religion may have no soundness to them. 
Are the Roman legions defeated because certain 
vexing Parthian arrows have come whistling 
through the air? or is the moon bound to fall 
because some Chinese fireworks have been let off 
toward it? Despite the clever talking and wri- 
ting of that militant unbeliever—whether his 
name be Bradlaugh or Ingersoll—it is by no means 
certain that the fundamental do¢trines of religion 
are fi¢tions, or even that they are not proven mag- 
nificently beyond all reasonable question. Have 
patience. - Look beneath the surface. Wash the 
fair color on the cheek of that objection, and see 
if it does not wash off. Rap on that solid-looking 
argument, and see if it is not hollow. Possibly a 
single rap of your knuckles may break through 
the shell. If it resists your finger, try a hammer 
upon it. If it resists your hammer, try that of 
Socrates the son of Sophroniscus, or that of some 
other redoubtable demolisher of shams. What 
you cannot do to-day you may be able to do to- 
motrow, when in a brighter mood or better in- 
formed. What you cannot do yourself, your more 
learned or experienced friend may do for you. 


HERMES TRISMEGISTUS. 85 


Very possibly some other unbeliever may come 
along and save both of you the trouble, by him- 
self knocking on the head the puzzling argument 
of his brother skeptic—as has often happened. 
At any rate, do not forget that there are other 
juggleries than those of Trismegistus ; and that 
when Christianity and Theism are speciously ob- 
jected to by some ingenious man, it may, after all, 
turn out that they are true as Truth itself, and 
provable as such by as good and convincing evi- 
dence as can be found in the world. 


Words are like PAINTS: an artist rare 
Can dip his brush and raise the dead, 
Picture the cheek, set eye aflame, 
O’er the dim brow the soul-beam shed. 


Words are like pREsS: thank paint and rags, 
Caliph Haroun walks forth a clown; 

Thank paint and robes, a common hind 
Becomes Haroun and wears his crown. 


Words are like STONES: a builder true 
Can mutely quarry, hew, and frame, 

Till fane sublime sings psalms to God, 
Or some usurper of his name. 


Words are like sworps: a master hand 
Can slip Orion’s sworded zone, 

Then wheel and flash, put right to flight, 
And seat base wrong upon its throne. 


86 


TEMPTED TO UNBEL/IEF. 


Words are like FIREWORKS: who knows well 
How to compound and use such wares, 
Can give brave show in places dark, 
And make his gases rain like stars. 


Words are like sopy—thought the soul; 
Ill housed was famous Socrates, 
While puny Sophos dwelt within 
Fair Phoebus, or vast Hercules. 


Heed well your words—true coin or false, 
Drugs that can either cure or kill; 

Bright swords that keenly cut two ways, 
Smite God or Satan—as you will. 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 87 


VAT. 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 


A CERTAIN king had a number of counsellors. 
One of these was far superior to the rest in the 
promptness, clearness, and excellence of the coun- 
sels he gave. Accordingly, he stood first with 
his sovereign. Being found ten times better as a 
counsellor than any of his companions, he was 
thought ten times as much of, and his word was 
easily commander-in-chief. 

Daniel was not a perfect guide. I doubt 
whether his king supposed him to be such. But 
this did not prevent his from being the command- 
ing voice in the royal cabinet. It was enough 
that, as an adviser, he was by far the best that 
could be had—ten times better than all other 
wise men in all the realm of Babylonia. 

I commend Nebuchadnezzar. He acted rea- 
sonably, and as reasonable men att everywhere. 
Suppose a traveller is at the jun¢tion of several 
roads. Which shall he take? ‘The enemy is 
behind him; he can neither return nor delay; 
which of the competing roads shall he take? If 
he is able to see that, on the whole, one of them 


88 LEMPTED TO -UNBLLIZEF, 


promises ten times better than any other, he asks 
for nothing more. He thankfully and swiftly 
takes it at once. And this though it does not 
seem to him altogether free from objection. 

A father is considering to what college to 
send his son. He does not see that any one of 
them is a perfect institution as to discipline or 
scholarship, but he does see that there is a great 
difference among them in these respects; and on 
looking the ground well over, sees that there is 
one ten times better than any competitor. ‘This 
is enough. It being a foregone conclusion that 
his son is to be liberally educated, it is concluded 
without hesitation where he must besent. Neb- 
uchadnezzar has found his Daniel. ‘The traveller 
has found his best road. 

On the same principle men choose their call- 
ing in life, their place of business, their partner- 
ships—in short, all their great undertakings. 
They do not insist that they be free from objec- 
tions. It is enough that they appear vastly 
superior to all competing undertakings. 

If people would only aét on the same principles 
in religious matters, there is no doubt that they 
would take the Christian religion with its doc- 
trines and practice as the guide of life. Is it not 
ten times better for that purpose than anything 
‘else they know of? 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 89 


Think over the various religious systems 
which offer themselves, and by one of which we 
must order our lives. Shall it be that of Homer, 
or Zoroaster, or the Grand Lama, or Confucius, 
or Boodh, or Brahma, or Mohammed, or Paine, 
or Joseph Smith, or Comte, or some other inde- 
pendent thinker, or yourself, or Jesus Christ? 
With a wise man the question is merely this: 
Which of these many guides is the most promis- 
ing? If one can be found which, all things 
considered, is ten times more promising than any 
other, then it must be accepted. 

To a man of these times and countries the ques- 
tion can be considerably narrowed. He will throw 
out of competition at once all the Paganisms, clas- 
sical and unclassical. They are mere rubbish. 
Nor will he stop a moment to consider the claims 
of Mohammedanism, Lamaism, or Mormonism. 
Such bubbles burst of themselves when they 
have have risen a few inches in the atmosphere 
of just thought. The comparison lies between 
Christ and yourself or some other well-informed 
person or school of persons offering views as to 
religion. 

Let us begin moderately. Among these remain- 
ing persons or schools will you find any religious 
teacher less open to objection than Christianity and 
wis underlying Theism ? 


Tempted to Unbelief. Ee 


go TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


Many objections are brought against the Scrip- 
tures; some on literary grounds, some on scien- 
tific, some on historic, and some on moral. For 
example, it is claimed by some that the Book is 
inconsistent with itself; this passage contradi¢ts 
that; this doétrine or precept or faét does not 
agree with some other. The charges are many. 
Some do not care to measure their words, but 
go so far as to say that the Bible is a tissue of 
self-contradictions. You, perhaps, do not care 
to talk so recklessly; but you have had your dif- 
ficulties in putting this and that together. In- 
deed, do not Christian commentators confess such 
difficulties and devote much space to attempts 
at clearing them up, and not always with the 
most brilliant success ? 

Well, if there is any other religious, or irre- 
ligious, scheme less open to obje¢tions of all sorts 
than the Christian, I would like to see it. I 
have not seen it yet. Every special scheme- 
founder profusely objeéts to the schemes of other 
people. Even your own private scheme, on which, 
perhaps, you greatly pride yourself, if once fairly 
set before the public would probably be found as 
fair a target for sharpshooters as any other. 
What right have you to think that you would 
fare better than such ingenious people as Hume 
and Mill? You have escaped because unknown. 


ane aillell 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. gt 


To be read would be to be riddled. ‘To appear 
would be to disappear, if hard knocks of objec- 
tions could make you vanish. Your critics would 
start up right and left ; would swarm at you like 
bees with drawn stings; would say that you blow 
hot and cold, east and west, diction and contra- 
diétion in the same breath; in short, would show 
you no mercy. You have only to become famous 
enough to make it worth while. ‘This, unless it 
is lawful to assume that you are the greatest man 
that ever lived, or that the world will be kind 
enough to reverse for once its immemorial habit 
in your favor. Nay it would be hard to show 
that, for every plausible arrow shot at the Bible, 
one might not shoot ten arrows as plausible at 
any competing book you can mention, even 
though you name that unwritten book which sets 
forth your own private views on religious matters, 
and, as you suppose, shoots sunbeams into the 
world of religious speculation. 

Will you find any of these religious teachers bet- 
ter furnished with positive evidence than ts Christ or 
God ? 

You have known’ fault found with the Chris- 
tian evidences, and even with the Theistic. 
Some men of note have pronounced them in- 
sufficient, and even absurd. And somehow they 
do not weigh with yourself as heavily as some 


92 TEMPTED LO UNBEINES. 


say they should; they seem to you very consider- 
ably short of demonstration. 

Well, all I will just now ask is, Do you know 
of any religious scheme that is Jdetter proven? 
Suppose you should subject the proofs offered by 
Comte—or any other person or persons—in behalf 
of his Religion of Humanity to as exacting a cru- 
cible as you do the Christian proofs, would they 
show any less dross? ‘Take that set of religious 
notions and principles which you call your own, 
your agnosticism, and which you have built up, 
as some cities have been built up, partly from 
original material, but more from the spoils of 
previous struétures—do you honestly think that 
another person than yourself would judge your 
proofs one whit better in quantity or quality than 
those of Christianity? ‘‘ Zekel, Teckel’? he cries. 
You are quite as light in your neighbor’s balance 
as he is in yours. And that is very light. To 
be convinced of it you have only to publish, and 
gain attention. Straightway all the horizon 
thunders at you. You are a city attacked on all 
sides at once. ‘This has been the fate of all other 
noted systems; why not of fours? Philosophers 
are at swords’ points with other philosophers. 
Nobody is satisfied with another’s arguments. 
Neighbors are anything but neighborly. The 
most a new schemer can do is to gather about 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 93 


him enough disciples to found a school whose 
struggle for existence with rival schools keeps 
society in perpetual din, and does not always end 
in the survival of the fittest. I will venture 
thus far: if any should claim that Christianity 
has ¢en times the breadth and variety and weight 
of evidence that belong to any of its competitors, 
not excepting that which calls you father or step- 
father, you would find it remarkably hard to dis- 
prove the claim. 

Will you find any system that has been more | 
widely accepted among fair and discerning men ? 

Yonder philosopher has a following. Count 
his disciples—it will not be a very hard matter— 
and estimate their quality. No-religion has a 
much larger retinue: men whose principle is to 
oppose or neglect every definite form of religious 
creed. Count and estimate them. Some range 
themselves under the banners of what they call 
Natural Religion, meaning by it such excerpts 
from the Bible doétrines as the earlier modern inf- 
dels found themselves able to agree upon as being 
agreeable to natural reason: such as the doétrines 
of God, and human responsibility to him in an- 
other life. Note the quantity and quality of these 
men. Is there any other scheme that you think 
worth noticing? Try itin the same way. Then 
proceed to examine the adherents of Christianity. 


94. TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


Will you find these less resve¢table in point of 
number, ability, learning, candor, painstaking 
investigation, life-long studiousness, than the fol- 
lowers of other systems? ‘Think over such names 
as Newton, Boyle, Pascal; and, if your knowl- 
edge of men and history is wide, you will see that 
Christianity has at least no occasion to hang her 
head among her rivals. Where is one that can 
show a grander roll of discipleship? ‘That men 
of shining abilities and attainments can be found, 
to some extent, in almost every religious school, 
is freely granted; but if we move our telescope 
backward over the ages we shall find successively 
occupying our field of view such brilliant star- 
throngs of believers as seem to defy competition, 
and every now and then a very Milky Way of them. 
If one fresh from such a review should declare 
that nine out of ten of the world’s Titans are to 
be credited to Christ; that his retinue is ten times 
more kingly with such men than any other that 
can be found, would you not find it hard to dis- 
prove him ? 

Is any religious system more free from moral re- 
proach on the score of its atsciples than the Chris- 
tran 2 

A certain man on being asked to become a 
Christian, declined on the ground that he had 
been brought up to keep good company. ‘This 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 9s 


was sufficiently ridiculous. But it sharply voices 
a reproach that Christianity has often to meet. 
Well, we must confess in her behalf that bad men 
can be found among her professed friends—just as 
bad men can be found among artists, authors, sci- 
entists, statesmen, kings—and that she is heartily 
ashamed of not a few of her professors. But is 
she alone troubled thus? I have yet to learn of 
any scheme of religion or irreligion that, to say 
the least, is any better off Are there not bad 
men among infidels, atheists, skeptics? Are there 
none among Spiritists, Rationalists, T’ranscenden- 
talists, Agnostics, Free Religionists, Intuitionists, 
Positivists —whatever the name the unbelievers 
in Christianity prefer? Was Voltaire or Paine or 
Comte a savory man? Do their disciples never 
stumble; never make a particle of business for 
courts of justice, prisons, hempen cords? Nay, I 
could uncover dreadful facts just here. But I for- 
bear. Certainly, the church has no monopoly of 
wickedness. I even suspeét that it would be 
found, on careful examination into the statistics 
of vice and crime, that the unchurched world fur- 
nishes its full share of the shocking and shameful 
and scandalous; nay, that the men who believe 
in a God who sees all wrong things even in their 
seed-thoughts, and has forbidden them all in his 
Scriptures, and has appointed a day in which he 


96 LEMPTIED TO UNBELTIEF. 


will judge the world in righteousness, are tex times 
more free from disgraceful courses than those who 
have no such belief. From the nature of things 
how can it be otherwise? 

Will you find any religious system that ts safer 
Sor the family and society at large than the Chris- 
tian? 

You are a father. You are naturally anxious 
that your children should turn out well. For 
their sakes and for your own you would keep 
them from paths of vice and crime and shame; 
would secure them to paths of honor, usefulness, 
and principle. But they are headstrong. ‘They 
are greatly tempted. Their passions are eager, 
their circumstances ensnaring, their moral strength 
small, their experience nothing. Multitudes un- 
der like circumstances have brought themselves 
and their friends to grief; and many a white head 
has been brought down into the grave which filial 
misconduét has dug for it. Casting about for safe- 
guards to these young fire-eaters and fledgling tem- 
pests, do you see any set of notions on the subject 
of religion better fitted to serve your purpose than 
the Christian? Is any form of zufidelity that you 
know of likely to be a greater restraining and 
guiding force? Has not many a father rued the 
day in which his son, becoming too wise for the 
Bible, became too wicked to live out of prison? 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 97 


I cannot but think that, on looking the ground 
well over, you would feel ze times safer as to the 
future of your family in this world, to say nothing 
of the next, were they firm believers in the Chris- 
tian religion. 

So for any community. It is being dragged 
downward by many and powerful gravitations. 
You, a thoughtful man, with some knowledge of 
men and history, and some interests at stake in 
the matter, what set of religious ideas would you 
think likely to be safest and most useful in the 
place where you have adventured your property, 
your good name, your comfort, and your home? 
Is it atheism—or any of its sisters or cousins? On 
your conscience, man, tell me. Suppose all these 
people to become infidels of any type you please, 
to-morrow, would your hopes in regard to the vil- 
lage, the State, the nation, so rise that you would 
at once bid above par for its stocks? Or would 
you rather begin to shiver, and to think of the 
Reign of Terror? Christianity builds a wall 
about the peace and good order of society, shoots 
the lightnings of two worlds at its assailants; and, 
for one, I have no doubt that the man who should 
undertake to prove that it is not zex ¢zmes better 
than any substitute that has yet been offered for 
social ills and perils would find his task a most 
difficult one. 


Tempted to Unbelief. I 3 


g8 ‘TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


Let us look at this matter more in the way of 
definite examples. Leaving out of view such re- 
ligious systems as stand no chance whatever of 
acceptance among intelligent men, how do such 
systems as are found in our Christendom compare 
with the Christian System in eligibility ? 

I. Spzretism. 

Various notions on religious matters come to 
us, professedly, from departed spirits. These no- 
tions have been accepted by numbers, a few of 
whom are men of culture and science. But on 
looking at the system—if so vague and various a 
thing can be called a system—we find much to 
object to. We find the spirits flatly, continually, 
and confessedly contradi¢ting each other to an 
enormous extent. Much of their teaching is as 
much against reason and conscience and morality 
as against self-consistency. ‘The signs and won- 
ders relied on for proof are largely puerile, mostly 
unserviceable, and at times even diabolical in 
their aspect. ‘Though here and there a scholarly 
man (once scholarly) is found among the adhe- 
rents of Spiritism, yet for the most part its disci- 
ples are not, in intelligence, principle, or social 
standing, such as to refleét credit on the views 
they have embraced. Above all, its actual fruits 
in society cry out against it. I know that an in- 
genious mind can plausibly object to anything: 


= 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 99 


but this Spiritism is an unwalled town, inviting 
hostile incursions from all quarters, and getting 
what it invites. Confess that it does not take 
much hardihood for one to declare that it is zen 
times more open to objection and less promising 
as a guide of life than the Christian system. 

Il. Vulgar Infidelity. 

Many of those who reject Christianity or The- 
ism as either false or unproven are not philoso- 
phers. ‘hey merely discredit the old faith on 
some popular ground, without putting any defi- 
nite creed in its stead, or even attempting to do 
so. ‘They content themselves with negation and 
no-religion. ‘‘Content themselves,’ do I say? 
That is impossible—as impossible as it would be 
for a sound-minded sailor who has lost confidence 
in his old compass, chronometer, and pilot, to go 
forward contentedly, with all sails set, through 
unknown seas without any guide, and even with- 
out seeking for any. | 

Without a positive creed, on so important a 
journey! Without even an effort to obtain one! 
How unreasonable! Contrary to all the maxims 
of worldly prudence and the habits of worldly 
business. Also very insufficient for the needs of 
our crooked, headstrong human society. Where 
are the moral restraints of a system of negations ? 
Where are its consolations and inspirations ? 


ete) TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


What would society come to with only so little to 
restrain and reform as such a scheme offers? Not 
that infidels, or even atheists, are always quite 
without the maxims of common morality; but 
these maxims are quite without force and pen- 
alty, save such as come from conscience, public 
opinion, and the law of the land—that is to say, 
little or nothing in the case of very bad and reck- 
less men, and of that whole world of iniquity that 
lies within a man and is the root of all outward 
wickedness. Men can hope to escape all penal- 
ties save such as shoot from the tribunal of an 
omniscient God. When all mankind reaches the 
point which France reached about a century ago, 
where its only religion is a refusal of all positive 
religion, may I not be there to see. Iam not so 
fond of earthquakes, deluges, and conflagrations 
that ‘‘leave not a rack behind.”’ 

Common infidels and atheists think it easy to 
find plausible obje¢tions to Christianity and The- 
ism. Well, is it not fully as easy to object plaus- 
ibly to these obje€tions? ‘Try it, as some of us 
have done, and then say yes—and say it loudly. 
Nay, I am inclined to think that if any one should 
venture to assert that Infidelity is tex tzmes more 
open to objection and generally unpromising as a 
guide than Christianity, you would hardly think 
it much of a venture, but rather that he ven- 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. IOI 


tures largely who undertakes to prove the con- 
trary. 

Ill. Philosophisms. 

By these I mean schemes of notions in regard 
to religious matters, resting on what is called a 
philosophical basis. ‘This basis at the present day 
is generally materialistic. 

Hach of these schemes has but a slender fol- 
lowing. A knot of speculative people gather at 
the Porch and call themselves Stoics; another 
knot gather at the Lyceum and call themselves 
Peripatetics; another at the Garden and call 
themselves Epicureans; and so on. And these 
little camps fortify themselves and begin to shoot 
at each other with all their might. The arrows 
darken the sun, and stand as thickly on each 
leader as ever did gray-goose shafts on some un- 
lucky wight between two armies. ‘That is to say, 
each school profusely and sharply objeéts to every 
other. Each finds an indefinite amount of soph- 
isms, self-contradiétions, and puerilities in every 

system save its own. Saving the exception, my 
finding is the same. ‘These many and various 
philosophisms are construéted with about equal 
ingenuity, defended with about equal plausibil- 
ity, and affirmed with about equal confidence. 
Which of these shall I take? Each of them is as 
mutable as the castles of cloud-land when the 


102 LEMPTED TOVCONBELLIATLS. 


wind stirs freely. Which form of the swiftly- 
changing Proteus shall I snatch at and try to re- 
tain? We scarcely have time to get acquainted 
’ with a philosophy before it becomes something 
else. Platonism changes to Middle and New, 
Epicurus gets unable to recognize his disciples 
or himself, Comte becomes Mill, and Mill be- 
comes some one else. And the changes are so 
rapid one may almost be pardoned for saying that, 
to catch the phases of philosophical speculation, 
one needs to be as active as a photographer taking 
the phases of an eclipse, or of a Board of Brokers. 

In fine, I object to all and singular of these 
schemes—a large amount of mere guesses, assump- 
tions, non-sequiturs, not to say paradoxes—that, 
being founded in materialism, they are opposed 
to the traditions, consciences, habits, and com- 
mon sense of mankind as crystallized in innumer- 
able laws and institutions; that the proofs of 
themselves which they offer (to say nothing of 
their doétrines) are, from the nature of the case, 
unintelligible to the great mass of mankind, and 
so can never establish a religion for the people; 
also, that if accepted by the people at large, there 
would be great reason to fear (such has been the 
experience of the world) the total overthrow of 
society. 

Are you quite sure that such objections are not 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 103 


on the whole quite as weighty as any that can be 
brought against Christianity? Nay, should one 
assert that Christianity is ze tzmes more credible 
as a guide than the best Philosophism that ever 
undertook to supersede it, would you feel able to 
disprove the assertion—even though it lies against 
that favorite original or ecle¢tic philosopher who 
answers to your own name and cannot be distin- 
guished from you by nearest friends ? 

Admit that no system of religious belief and 
practice known to us is clearly better than the 
Christian; that, on the contrary, iftany man 
put trumpet to his lips and challenge the world 
to show another system a Zenth part as good, as to 
freedom from objections, as to strength and vari- 
ety of positive evidence, as to wideness of accept- 
ance, as to splendor of discipleship, as to general 
usefulness and safety, he would not be likely to 
find any well-informed person venturesome enough 
to take up the gauntlet: what follows? This— 
that it is Ze times better to have Christianity for the 
guide of life than any other religious system that 
can be put in its place. For consider, Christian- 
ity is a venerable heir-loom. It has been tenderly 
handed down to us through generations of revered 
ancestors. It is now not only in possession of the 
ground, but in entrenched possession. What 
multitudes of churches deck the land! What 


104 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


thousands minister at its altars! What millions 
of money are invested in its great institutions ! 
How it has rooted and ramified itself in the fam- 
ily, in educational institutions, in governments, 
in literature and art, in public manners and mor- 
als, so that it enters into the whole structure of 
society very much as the veins and arteries do 
into the human body. Can we weed out these 
veins and arteries without trouble? Is a chemist 
likely to withdraw an element from a thousand 
different compounds without some notable explo- 
sions in his laboratory? ‘To dislodge Christianity 
from its place among us is to disorganize society. 
We do it at the hazard of an earth-quaking revo- 
lution. Shall we be at all this trouble and peril 
merely to put in the place of Christianity some- 
thing that at the most is no better, and, for aught 
one can prove, may be far worse? ‘That were 
wonderfully foolish. Under such circumstances, 
whatever is is best—¢en tzmes best. A sailor had 
far better keep on with his old chart, compass, 
chronometer, pilot, which at least have served 
him tolerably well, till he knows of something so 
plainly better as to warrant the expense and trou- 
ble of a change. It is ten times better to con- 
tinue living in the old family mansion, with 
whatever disadvantages it may have, than to be 
at the trouble and expense of pulling it down 


_— 


WHICH TO CHOOSE. 105, 


and setting up in its place a house not one whit 
better, and perhaps very much worse. ‘This is 
such easy common sense that one almost feels like 
making an apology for formally stating it. 

For my part, I intend to live in the old 
house till something plainly better offers. Nebu- 
chadnezzar will keep his Daniel; for, all things 
considered, he is ten times better as a privy-coun- 
sellor than all the magicians and astrologers in 
all the realm. 


Tempted to Unbelief. ; I4 


106 - TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


VIED. 


LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 


ALL agree that we must adapt our conduct to 
our actual surroundings. It will not do to sail 
our ship regardless of the shoal here, of the reef 
there, of the iceberg or rising tempest yonder; it 
will not do to live in this nineteenth century as 
if it were the ninth, in this republican America 
as if it were monarchical Spain, in this noon of 
summer as if it were the dead and dread of win- 
ter, in these times of peace as if in the throb of 
the civil war. 

Prudent men go farther than this. They feel 
that their conduét must take into account not 
only what certainly zs, but also what may be. 
Does one propose to himself a European excur- 
sion? He sits down and counts the cost. It will 
surely be a thousand dollars; it may be half as 
much more. If he should be sick, or fail to make 
certain conneétions—well, he will be on the safe 
side. He will deposit with his banker enough 
to cover possible expenses. How unpleasant it 
would be to find himself without funds in a 
strange land! 


LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 107 


On his way to the steamer our traveller no- 
tices a farmer hurrying his hay together with 
might and main. What is the matter? Why, 
the man has seen a hand-breadth of cloud on the 
horizon, and has heard some mutterings as of 
thunder. Is he sure that a thunder-shower will 
soon drench his fields and greatly damage all the 
crop left exposed? By no means. He only thinks 
such a thing possible. But then it concerns him 
to provide against that possibility. He could ill 
afford to lose several tons of capital hay, or sev- 
eral head of Jerseys in consequence of their eat- 
ing its musty ruins. Hence all this hurry. Ho, 
men! sweep in the windrows! Pack heap upon 
heap—till the long files of cocks stand sheathed 
in their dreadnaughts of complete armor against 
the assaulting elements. ‘‘He is doing,’’ says 
the traveller as he flashes by on his train, ‘just 
what I have done. He is taking account of what 
may be.”? 

And now the train is exchanged for the ship. 
His baggage well settled in the state-room (where 


the has not failed to notice and try on a life- 
_ preserver), our friend walks forth on a round of 


observation. He enters the saloon and finds there 
the inevitable medicine chests. He promenades 
the deck as the Sea-Queen glides majestically out 
of the harbor. Yonder, in long lines, hang buck- 


108 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


ets and axes. Here, right and left, swing on 
their cranes several lifeboats. All about are scat- 
tered firemen, seamen, and other hands in great 
numbers—many of them with apparently little or 
nothing to do. 

‘‘Good morning, captain! we have made a 
fair start of it; but do you really need so largea 
crew as I see you have ?”? 

‘“That depends. If the weather should be 
favorable all the way, several of the hands might 
be spared; but as we cannot be sure of that, we 
are obliged to have the number you see. ‘The 
same with our provisions and coal. Probably our 
supply of each is much larger than will be needed; 
but should the wind be high and strongly ahead, 
or should we be disabled by a storm, it would be 
unfortunate to have less. For the same reason 
we have duplicates of almost everything you see. 
For the same reason, also, the steamer itself and 
its cargo are insured—as I suppose are the lives 
and houses of most of our passengers. Are not 
yours ?”? 

Does our friend wonder at what he sees and 
hears? By no means. It is an old story with 
him. He recognizes the way of prudent men 
the world over; indeed, his own way. Is that 
captain sure of a fire, a storm, a wreck, a sick- 
ness, a long voyage? He confidently expects the 


LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 109 


contrary. Is it not midsummer? Has he not 
passed the deep many times without mishap, till 
his friends call him Captain Lucky? His round 
English face fairly shines with good-humor and 
pleasant anticipations. But then unpleasant 
things do sometimes happen at sea; they are 
among the possibilities of even zs voyage; and 
so he provides for what may be, as well as for 
what he is sure of. Should he do otherwise, and 
a catastrophe happen, all the newspapers would 
bark at him, or his memory, like Cerberus. And 
they ought to. 

Socrates looked around on the common facts 
of Athens, and drew from them a moral philoso- 
phy. A sage of wider fame than he, and one 
whose doétrines have had far wider diffusion and 
influence, made the common fatts of the field 
and the street his trumpets for conveying to men 
still sublimer lessons. Let us, for the time, be 
disciples of these sages, and gather a lesson from 
the manner in which prudent men are wont to 
take account of possibilities in managing their 
secular affairs. 

I come to my neighbor with an urgent plea. 
What I want of him above all things is that he 
will distin€tly undertake to order his life by the 
teachings of the Bible. I assail him with the 
whole Christian arsenal of persuasions. I tell 


110 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


him the pathetic story of Jesus. I ply him with 
the logic of gratitude and the logic of re€titude. 
I appeal to him by the here and the hereafter. 
In short I bring to bear on his unchristian posi- 
tion what seems to mea whole host of motives, 
such as the best army is before battle has soiled 
its plumes and disordered its array. Does this 
army conquer? It ought to; and its victory is 
life and royalty to the vanquished. 

But I am disappointed. ‘The man is a flint, 
and looks flints. My waves are dashed into spray. 
‘‘Explain it, man: how is it that you can hear 
unmoved such representations as I have just made 
to you? One would think they might turn stones 
into men, instead of men into stones, as they 
appear todo. ‘Tell me why I have used them in 
vain.”? 

After some hesitation my neighbor says, ‘‘I 
will be frank with you. I will tell you what is 
yet a secret to my nearest friends. You wonder 
that what you say makes so little impression on 
me. Know then that the explanation lies here: 
I am by no means swre of the zruth of what you 
tell me—of that future life, that heavy guilt, that 
everlasting punishment, that divine Saviour, that 
inspired Bible, even that personal God. No 
doubt your conclusion is just, provided your 
premises are so. But to me each of these prem- 


4 


- ——— 


LOOKINGAZOWAE. POSSIOLE. III 


ises is a fog speared with an interrogation point. 
If I were certain of their truth, as I am certain of 
these mathematics or of yonder sun, do you sup- 
pose I would delay one single moment doing as 
you urge? No, sir; I have too much regard to 
my interests; the instinct of self-preservation 1s 
quite too strong. JI am not exactly a fool. If 
some miracle or wonderful geometry could de- 
monstrate to me God and the Bible, you would 
have no further occasion to complain of my slow- 
ness. My wheels would flash to your goal like 
the lightning.’’ 

What answer do I make to this man? I tell 
him that I am sorry, inexpressibly sorry, to learn 
of his unbelief. I tell him that to my mind every 
unbeliever is in a most deplorable and dangerous 
condition; is, in fact, like a ship in Artic seas 
whose brief summer is just closing, and around 
which the ice-packs are daily extending and com- 
pacting. Up, Sir John Franklin! Up, officers 
and all hands! Lose no time. Spare no efforts. 
Extricate yourselves while you may. I am by 
no means sure that the thing can be done even 
now. It is, however, worth a trial. 

In very much the same way I would speak to 
my unbelieving neighbor. Let him get out of 
his unbelief at the earliest possible moment. The 
situation is full of danger. At the same time I 


112 ZTEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


assure him that he needs not such mathematical 
evidence in order that he may reasonably be 
called upon to order his life according to the 
Christian doétrines and rules. It is enough that 
God and the Bible are fosszdle truths to him; 
enough that he zs xot able to demonstrate their falsity 
beyond all question. ‘This being the case, con- 
sidering the absolute righteousness of the general 
Christian life, and its plain tendency to useful- 
ness in every direction, he should proceed to it at 
once. He is sure to lose nothing, and may gain 
everything. He willonly be doing what prudent 
men are wont todo the world over—taking ac- 
count of the possible as well as the certain, occu- 
pying the safe side as travellers, as farmers, as 
sailors, as insurers of all sorts. No man is on the 
safe side in religion who does not recognize its — 
great doctrines as possibly true by acting as if 
they were really so. 

And are not God and the Bible as his message 
at least posszb/e truths to my neighbor? Even 
such an unbeliever as John Stuart Mill was 
obliged to say: ‘‘’T’o the conception of the rational 
skeptic it remains a possibility that Christ was 
what he supposed himself to be— a man charged 
with a special, express, and unique commission 
from God.’’ Who can prove to a dead certainty 
that there is no Personal Designer of ourselves 


LOOKING, TOTAL, POSSIBLE, 113 


and of the wonderful embowering heavens and 
earth? to a dead certainty that the Bible did not 
come from such a Being? If he has never care- 
fully examined the subject, as ten to one he has 
not, he of course is not entitled to answer affirma- 
tively. If he has examined, he has caught what 
seemed at least glimpses of such things as these: 
that a God is the most intelligible, simple, sure, 
complete and salutary explanation of nature; that 
the logic which is good against Him is about 
equally good against the foundation principles 
of right and wrong; that Christianity is greatly 
superior to every other known scheme of religion, 
has a beneficial tendency, is well adapted to 
human nature and conditions, has wide accept- 
ance among the ablest and best, is extremely apt 
to grow in favor with men as they grow in virtue, 
is formidably attested by what seem prophecies, 
miracles, and answers to prayer, is startlingly in 
accord with archzeology and many-voiced science. 
He has noticed so many such things that it is 
quite impossible that he should be totally without 
misgivings in taking ground against God and the 
Bible. He may still doubt them, but he cannot 
feel absolutely sure that they are false. There is 
not a thoughtful man in all the world who feels 
competent to take such ground. He may express 
himself with utter confidence—unbelievers have a 


Tempted to Unbelief. I 5 


114 ILZEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


way of doing that—you might think, judging 
from his words and look alone, that the base of 
his pyramid is as broad as a continent, not to 
say the universe; but, between you and me, this 
is a man who could hardly be persuaded to go 
forth in the solemn night to yonder hilltop, and 
there, under the witnessing and listening stars, 
lift up his hand defiantly to the heavens and 
challenge the eternal wrath of God and of his Son 
Jesus—if indeed there be such Beings. He would 
shrink from it as from a terrible venture. Yet 
why should he hesitate if he is altogether sure 
that the action would be quite safe, there being 
no such Beings to take offence at the insult? 
Just as all trees tremble to the breeze, though the 
oak less than the willow; just as all waters ripple 
to the same impulse, though fresh water less 
than salt, and the ocean less than the Dead sea, 
so all men, though their names be Voltaire and 
Hume, in their measure waver before the Chris- 
tian and ‘Theistic Evidences, especially in the 
honest death-hour. 

Under these circumstances it is plain what the 
man should do. He should at once proceed to 
live according to the Christian dogtrines and 
rules, the falsity of which he cannot demonstrate. 
Then he will be on the safe side. Should the 
religion at last prove false, he has only lost a 


LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 115 


brief labor and self-denial; nay, let us not speak 
of loss at all in conneétion with so right and use- 
ful and noble a thing as a true Christian life is on 
all hands confessed to be. Should the religion at 
last prove true, he has saved an immortal soul; 
for he has that which, according to the Scrip- 
tures, will surely lead to such a result. How 
much the salvation of a soul means, let him tell 
who can. It would take greater words than I 
have at command, greater thoughts than ever 
rushed as suns through the empyrean of human 
or angelic genius. What can a man give in ex- 
change for a soul—that pearl that outweighs and 
outshines the heaviest astronomical sphere? So 
he has escaped the risk of an infinite loss, and put 
in its stead the chance of an infinite gain. He is 
like the prudent traveller who provides for possi- 
ble expenses of his journey; like the prudent far- 
mer who secures his crop against the possible 
shower; like the sailor whose sea-going outfit aims 
so largely to secure against possible disasters. 
Like them, but with this difference: these men, 
in case their possible does not prove actual, will 
have all their trouble and expense for nothing, 
save the satisfaction all along of feeling that they 
are the safer for what they have done. He, under 
like circumstances, will have all his trouble and 
expense for something—a mighty something; for 


116 ZEMPIED TO UNDELIES, 


that general mode of living involved in praétical 
Christianity is so good and grand in itself, apart 
from any governmental consequences, that it may 
well be compared to a king the best part of whose 
royalty consists in a right royal nature, in whose 
superber majesty his shining sceptre and diadem 
disappear, as disappears the farthing candle of 
the peasant in the golden floods of the ripened 
morning. 

Yes, it is plain what the unbeliever should do 
under these circumstances. Instead of acting as 
if absolutely and demonstrably sure that there is 
no truth in religion—as he is now doing—he 
should aét as if its truth were at least possible, 
and put himself on the safe side of the possibility. 
To do otherwise while carefully taking account 
of possible calamities in worldly matters, and in- 
suring against them, is as if a man should care- 
fully insure his pigsty against fire, and leave un- 
insured his great and costly mansions and ships. 
It is, in fat, so outrageous an imprudence that a 
man perpetrating it might well be supposed equal 
to any hair-brained venturesomeness whatever— 
even to abusing a religion known beyond all ques- 
tion to be true. What assurance can one have 
that a man who, with eyes open, runs against a 
New England boulder would not run himself 
against a solar system in full career? 


LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 117 


The man, we will suppose, yields to such con- 
siderations. He concludes to take the advice of 
Blaise Pascal (which indeed it did not need his 
ereat genius to give), ‘‘ Let us weigh the gain 
and the loss in taking heads that God exists. If 
you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose noth- 
ing. Wager, then, that God is, without hesita- 
tion.”? He concludes not to wait for the demon- 
strations of miracle or of mathematics before un- 
dertaking to govern his life by Christianity as a 
practical system. Its possible truth shall be his 
sufficient warrant. What then? I answer, faz¢h. 
Not at once, perhaps or probably, but gradually, 
as breaks the morning in high latitudes. That 
such a Being as the Bible represents God to be 
would be likely to reward well-doing according to 
light with more light, is a plain matter. But 
nature itself is mighty just here. Who does not 
know that good living is a most wholesome thing 
intelle@ually; that right aims, right feelings, and 
right conduét tend powerfully to right opinions; 
that all forms of goodness are to the soul what 
sunrise is to a fog or charcoal to foul water, v2z., 
a clearing up? It has been known from the time 
of Socrates, not to say of Adam, and out of this 
bullion a thousand adages have been coined and 
are current gold in our speech and literature to- 
day. So Jesus only spoke in the line of human 


118 LEM PTE DITO UNBELIEF 


experience when he said, ‘‘If any man will do 
His will he shall know of the doétrine;”’ ‘‘ He 
that doeth truth cometh to the light.”’? Here is a 
spring, covered by the long green grass, and quite 
too much overlooked, at which even the logical 
faculty can get refreshment and healing. If un- 
believers would gather about this Siloam as 
eagerly as men do about some fashionable Baden 
or Saratoga, and drink as freely and as regardless 
of expense, they would get vastly more benefit. 
Their souls would straighten up. ‘The fires would 
be renewed in the eye and cheek of the debilita- 
ted, reasoning, truth-perceiving faculty; and the 
whole sick thinker would find his flesh coming 
back to him like that of a little child. Try it, 
dyspeptic thinker! ‘Try it, ye who think lep- 
rosy! Try it, ye men who seem stone-blind 
toward God and his Bible: go wash in Siloam, 
and come seeing ! 

If the Bible is really true, its truth will be- 
come clearer and clearer to the well-doing and 
praying soul; if not true, that faét will grow more 
and more manifest. Any way, there is light 
ahead. ‘The faéts will come out. He is facing 
and moving eastward; and if he does not sooner 
or later arrive at the Gates of Day, it will be be- 
cause the wheels of nature have gone back- 
ward. 


2205 


LOOKING TO THE POSSIBLE. 


Yes, it may be true—yonder mountain of rock 
Which men call the Bible, that so scorns the shock 
Of crested ages as they sweep to the charge, 

And dashes them backward in foam from its targe. 


It may be true—like that other true book 

Which men call Nature, that seems to their look 

So fair and so grand, with its great starlit page, 

That they fall on their knees and worship—The Age! 


It may be true—for it bids to all right, 

And sees never a wrong which it does not smite; 
Yet seeks, like a shepherd, the lost on the wold, 
And woos back the world’s lost Age of Gold. 


It may be true—many wisest and best 

In seeking a Word, have here ended their quest: 
Our Magi have seen a new star in the East, 

And come in due time to one Jesus, the Christ. 


And if it be true—then right happy the man 
Who lays out his life on its heaven-taught plan! 
They who cleave to the good, and the evil refuse, 
Have all things to gain, and just nothing to lose. 


And if it be true—then alas for the man 

Who has all things to lose and nothing to gain! 
Whose life is as though it were clear as the sun, 
The foes of the Bible their battle have won, 


And shown it a wrecker on a storm-swept shore, 
Watching for ships that shall sail no more, 

And setting up false lights to shine o’er the main, 
That true lights may sink and shine never again. 


11g 


120 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


1D Gi 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 


It is found that many plain Christians, who 
have never made any scholarly investigation into 
the merits of their religion, and who indeed have 
never been able to do it from lack of faculty or 
leisure, are yet possessed of a very strong faith. 
The sneers and arguments of the most gifted and 
plausible unbelievers make no impression on 
them. In times of faint-heartedness and waver- 
ing they stand firm as the hills. They need no 
buttressing on this hand and on that from public 
opinion. ‘They evidently could go to prison and 
to death, if necessary, in behalf of their religion. 

Such persons have been found in every age. 
The vast majority of Christians have always been 
without any learned investigations into the foun- 
dations of their faith. And yet not a few of 
them, by the lives they have lived, by the sacri- 
fices they have made, by the sufferings they have 
undergone, by the martyrdoms they have freely 
and even joyfully submitted to, have given the 
best of evidence that their faith is real and pro- 
found. 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 121 


Is the attitude of such men irrational? Be- 
cause they have not technically argued out their 
religion, because they have not fought their way 
through libraries of apologetics, because they are 
incompetent to sustain a debate with ingenious 
opposers, have they therefore no good reason for 
the faith that isin them? Do not think it. They 
have the very best foundation for their indomita- 
ble Theism and Christianity, vzz., EXPERIENCE. 
They have ‘‘tasted and seen.’? So to speak, 
they have fe/¢ their way to their great confidence. 
Their reason, instead of approaching religion 
through the abstraét forms of logic and scholarly 
inquiry, has come to it through their eyes and 
ears and hands and consciousness and daily life. 

Let us examine the experience of one of these 
illogical and yet indomitable believers. We will 
call him Homo. 

First came what I will call Homo’s experience 
of human nature—that original stress on his views 
and feelings which comes from his very constitu- 
tion as a man. 

Is there any truth in the old, old saying that 
man is a religious being? 

We are told that a man who was curious on 
this question once submitted it to the test of 
experiment. He placed an infant in a hermitage. 
He took care to have none in charge of the child 


Tempted to Unbelief, 16 


122 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


as he grew who would in word or act lisp aught 
religious. He made the walls of that retreat 
thick and high, to shut off contaét with a super- 
stitious world. Lest some microscopic germs of 
the religious notions with which the outside air 
is charged should float in on his little patient, he 
sifted the air as carefully of its ‘‘fungous’’ motes 
as does ‘T'yndall in his experiments on spontane- 
ous generation. One human being, at least, 
should be brought up without religious ‘‘ biases 
and prejudices’’ of any sort. Thus guarded the 
child grew. But one morning he was found in 
the garden on his knees to the rising sun. He 
must have something to worship. 

In every known age the great masses of man- 
kind have believed, not only in Deity, but ina 
human soul distinét from the body, in a future 
after death for that soul, and even in that future 
as being retributive for the present. Whence 
come these beliefs? If one says that they came 
from near the sources of the race, and gradually 
ramified with it through many countries and 
ages, still we have to ask ourselves how they 
have managed to hold on their way with unaba- 
ted force so long and widely in a world of many 
obstacles, and overrun by change? Is there any 
explanation so good as that they are the children 
of human nature itself—born of its instin¢ts and 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 123 


needs, nourished at its breasts, and in their jour- 
ney through the world pressed from behind by its 
forces and on its tramways? How do we know 
that any plant is native to the soil? Is language 
natural, or government, or parentage, or love of 
our children, or playfulness in the young of all 
animals? ‘Then why not these international 
faiths, which are found about as widely among 
unsophisticated mankind, and defy equally well 
the assaults of time and circumstance ? 

Homo began with the experience of these 
subtile winds and currents toward faith that set 
in upon him from human nature itself. The 
lake-bed, scooped out by nature’s own hands, with 
some living springs at the bottom of it, is now 
ready to receive streams from every quarter— 
streams of faith—from the sky, from the water- 
shed that embraces it on nearly all sides, and 
from such channels as some Cyrus may dig for 
some diverted Euphrates. A natural foundation 
for the temple exists—the temple of faith; a 
quaking bog does not need to be made into solid 
eround, nor do first stones need to be imported 
from Sidonian quarries; they are already fash- 
ioned and in place, like some immemorial Egyp- 
tian pediment, all ready to be built upon by the 
first fit workman who chances along. 

2. The experience of Christian nurture. 


124 LEMPIED LO UNBELLILS, 


From the beginning Homo’s parents taught 
him the reality of God, and the truth of the Bible 
as a message from God. In accordance with this 
teaching his practical habits were started. He 
lisped prayer at his mother’s knee. She graved 
ineffaceably into his memory the Commandments, 
sacred hymns, easy Bible verses, before he could 
fairly read them. When he could read the Bible 
for himself he was put upon reading it daily; 
and the day must neither rise nor set without 
seeing him bending over the Book, and before its 
Author. He was bred not only to the closet, but 
also to the family altar, the prayer-meeting, the 
Sabbath-school, the sanftuary, and an eleét Chris- 
tian society. So, all through his childhood, he was 
zoned about by believing forces and breathed a 
believing atmosphere. He scarcely touched any- 
thing that was not saturated with faith, A 
thousand subtile influences that implied the truth 
of the Christian religion were ever stealing in 
upon him on all sides, from the words he heard, 
_ the examples he saw, and the books he read in 
that careful Christian home. 

The effeét of such nurture was, of course, to 
greatly reinforce those natural tendencies to faith 
of which I have spoken. ‘The boy fully accepted 
what he was told. He allowed this assent to 
become buttressed about by those many ways of 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 125 


Christian living. And, considering what his pa- 
rents were, how truthful, intelligent, and good he 
knew them to be, he did rightly. The course of 
training they put him upon was just as reasonable 
as their views; and their views were to him the 
best accessible. Whose views should he take if 
not theirs? So he yielded to the loving pressure 
brought to bear upon him and began to run in 
those grooves of faith which both nature and his 
parents had prepared for him. 

Thus, warm, moist, vaporous, gently weeping 
skies, day after day and month after month (such 
as geologists say nourished the vegetation of the 
young earth and filled its virgin hollows) made 
large contributions to the springy lake-bed which 
was found in Homo’s human nature itself. 

3. Experience with Testimony. 

As he grew and his observation widened, he 
became aware that not only his parents and the 
best of those just about him, but a multitude of 
others in many countries and ages must be counted 
. as thorough believers in Christianity. He saw it 
predominant among the most enlightened and 
prosperous nations. He came by degrees to know 
that among these nations the firmest believers are 
in general the best and best-informed men; and 
that leading unbelievers, especially those who 
have furnished the arsenal of unbelief, are apt to 


126 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


be as eminent for moral unworthiness as for un- 
belief. Further, he learned that not a few of the 
greatest, most learned, and most conscientious 
minds the world ever saw have examined the 
Christian Evidences most carefully and testified 
to their sufficiency. Indeed, he saw among their 
champions men of unsurpassed powers and ac- 
complishments; never was strength doughtier, 
skill more perfect, blade keener, trumpet louder 
or more tuneful: for has he not come to know of 
Newton and Locke and Boyle and Brewster and 
Pascal and Milton and many another in whose 
persons science, and literature, and eloquence, 
and statesmanship, and business have humbly 
bowed before the Scriptures, and taken from them 
opinions, law, and immortal hope? 

Such testimonies appealed to even his youth- 
ful experience. It had taught him to allow 
weight to such testimonies. From the first he 
had been wont to take a great variety of things 
on the word of others. He had been wont to see 
those about him doing the same in every-day life, 
in the gravest business matters, in courts of jus- 
tice, and and even in matters of science. Whence 
came his Geography and History, whence his 
elementary Astronomy and Geology? And other 
sciences, whose full orbs were not yet above his 
horizon, sent their twilights before them to tell 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 127 


him that they too would have to be accepted on 
the basis of faéts and experiments for the most 
part known only from the report of others. And 
his gradually accumulating observation and ex- 
perience had been to the effect that what every- 
body was in the habit of doing was really the fit 
thing to be done; that it is not only best, but 
even necessary, to found life largely on the testi- 
mony of other people; always stipulating that 
the testimony be that of competent and princi- 
pled persons. But who are competent and prin- 
cipled witnesses, if not those who solemnly lift 
up their right hands in court in behalf of Chris- 
tianity? What nations can be trusted in the 
witness-box, if not those of Christendom? What 
class among these nations can be taken at their 
word, if not those intellectually and morally most 
worthy? What individuals in this class ought to 
have special weight allowed to their emphatic 
affirmations of the reasonableness of religion and 
the sufficiency of its evidences, if not those great- 
minded and painstaking and conscientious inves- 
tigators whose names illumine mankind? And 
what persons ought to have their denials of reli- 
gion heavily discounted from, if not such super- 
ficial and unscrupulous men as are specimened 
by Voltaire and Paine? ‘To such questions the 
experience of our young friend, brief as it had 


128 CLMPLTEDITO UNBELIER 


been, seemed to give ready answer. Good testi- 
mony is good evidence; and in yielding to the 
Christian testimony he would yield not only to 
good testimony, but to the best to be had. So he 
yielded. And the faith within him, grounded in 
his nature and training, grew apace. 


Thus the natural lake-bed, with its living 


springs at the bottom, and into which the atmos- 
phere weeps daily through all the spring-time, 
now gets contributions from many a little fountain 
that trickles down into it from the whole sur- 
rounding water-shed, away to the distant moun- 
tains. ' 

4. Experience 7 secular farth. 

From his earliest years he had been wont to 
yield such faith on a simple preponderance of 
probability. He had found his fellow-men uni- 
versally doing the same. What all men do, save 
when under the influence of prejudice or passion, 
his experience taught him was fit, and even nec- 
essary, to be done. He found few things demon- 
strable. He found fewer still beyond ingenious 
cavil. If he should withhold faith in everything 
that can be speciously objeéted to, he would not 
believe in much. His eyes gradually opened 
widely on this. So he was put on his guard 
against religious cavils. So he was not unreason- 
able in his demand for religious evidence. He 


age 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 129 


would content himself with such and such meas- 
sure of evidence as human life is wont to be 
conduéted on. And the consequence was that 
his young faith did not suffer under ingenious at- 
tacks as it would otherwise have done, while it 
was daily finding more to feed it. His field for 
foraging was wider. No wonder that he gathered 
more. Sheaves that seemed to others too small 
to be noticed went to swell his harvest; and by 
degrees the littles amounted to much. 

Thus the lake-bed welcomed into its bosom 
many a brooklet which formal geographers did 
not care to put down on their map. 

5. Experience with doubt. 

There are questions in regard to which sus- 
pense of mind isnotroubleat all. Where nothing 
is at stake, why should one be troubled? But 
the moment some great interests of his are seen to 
hinge on the way in which he answers the ques- 
tion, then suspense becomes painful, perhaps 
exquisitely so. Our friend Homo had ample 
experience of this. In matters purely secular he 
felt the unrest, the subtile ache, the wretchedness 
of ‘‘halting between two opinions.”’ 

But his experience with doubt was not entire- 
ly secular. He knew what it was to have, occa- 
sionally, distant skirmishes with re/zgzous doubt. 
The fairest day is liable to some clouds; foul 


Tempted to Unbelief. I 7 


130 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


weather sooner or later appears in the most fa- 
vored latitudes; men who are never laid up with 
disease do sometimes have unpleasant touches of 
it; much-voyaging barks will in time cross at 
least the penumbra of some eclipse or the outer 
circles of some cyclone. Here the waves and 
thunders are nearly spent; but as the sailor tosses 
uneasily he can get a very good idea of what it 
would be to be tossing in the very heart of the 
tempest. So our friend, tossing on the edge of 
doubt, got a very good idea of what it would be to 
toss at the stormy centre. It would be no lullaby 
cradle, no delightfully swaying summer hammock, 
but something dreadful—an agony of suspense. 

This experience with doubt, secular and reli- 
gious, disposed him to shrink from it, and from 
all the paths leading to it. ‘‘A burnt child 
dreads the fire.’ One who has fallen down a 
precipice does not care to play on brinks, or any- 
where near them. And our friend did not care 
to play with doubt or even with any of its remote 
cousins, as too many do, but rather gave them a 
wide berth. And reasonably. He did not see 
any good that could come to him or others from 
his falling into an unsettled mind as to God and 
the Bible; and he ad see the threat of very con- 
siderable discomfort and harm—not to say confla- 
grations and precipices. 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 131 


And so the natural lake-bed went on receiv- 
ing streams which naturally descended into it, 
but which, save for the care taken to keep them 
free, would have become choked and diverted 
elsewhere. 

6. Experience of conviction. 

Weak, depraved, prone to guilt by a gravita- 
tion as steady, powerful and omnipresent as that 
which carries a dropped stone to the ground—this 
view of human nature, far more darkly colored 
than any found in the schemes of so-called philos- 
ophy or of popular opinion, is steadily held up as 
the true one by the religion of Christ. Over 
against this view of man it sets another of God, 
as frowning on the sinner in the terrors of infinite 
indignation and justice. No unbeliever takes 
such a view of either himself or God. At the 
most such a view seems to him only poetry or 
oriental hyperbole. He does not seem to himself 
half as bad as the Bible paints him; nor can he 
think that God is half as ‘‘angry with the wicked 
every day’’ as the Bible declares. What, ‘dead 
in trespasses and sins’?! What, ‘‘the heart of 
the sons of men fully set in them to do evil’’! 
What, ‘‘the flesh having no good thing dwelling 
in it’?! What, ‘‘the heart deceitful above all 
things, and desperately wicked ’’—and ‘“God a 
consuming fire’?! ‘This is altogether too strong 


132 LZEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


a picture to express his idea of either the creature 
or the Creator; too strong, indeed, to express the 
sense of things had by Homo up to the present 
time; for though he accepts the Bible, he has 
read many things in it as though he read them 
not, and, like the Jews of old, he has still a veil 
untaken away in the reading. 

But now he enters on a new phase of experi- 
ence. Hitherto he has been facing religion as a 
theory; now in some way he has come to face it 
as a practice. And the first steps he takes in the 
new direction begin a revelation. The plague of 
his own heart proceeds to manifest itself. ‘The 
veil rises, not only from before his own bosom, 
but also from before the charaéter of God as a 
hater and punisher of sin. He is startled, shocked. 
He had no idea that the case was so bad. It 
flings a gauntlet in the face of all the popular 
theories. He is not more ashamed when he looks 
within than he is alarmed when he looks above. 
At the same time the veil rises from before the 
Scriptures. He sees a new book. Its words 
about the lost state of man before a holy God 
blaze at him with a fiery significance, somewhat as 
the handwriting on the wall at Babylon did on 
the eyes of the banqueters. How surprisingly they 
match the facts as he has just learned them! All 
other systems wrong; the Christian system right. 


—- 


eo. 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 133 


All others flatter man and abridge God; this is 
rigorously accurate. He feels as in the presence 
of one who has original and divine sources of 
information. 

Thus the waters rise in the lake-bed as another 
stream comes pouring in from the mountains; 
and as Homo’s experience confirms the account 
which the Scriptures give of both man and God. 

7. Experience of Regeneration. 

After being convinced of sin and Sinai, and 
coming to the point of despairing of all human 
help by merely human means, on some white day 
our friend awoke to the faét of a total revolution in 
his tastes and aims and motives. Was it his own 
work? His experience had taught him to the con- 
trary. He had tried again and again; but some- 
how, while finding himself able to do sundry owt- 
ward aéts belonging to a Christian life, he found 
himself quite powerless to reach and dislodge 
the native enemies intrenched deep within him. 
What, not by a supreme effort? He gathered all 
his forces, and, by a desperate struggle like that by 
which a strongly kept fortress is sometimes taken 
has he at last dispossessed the enemy and occupied 
the citadel within with a new garrison and a new 
government? Alas, he cannot see that he has made 
the least impression. But he does see that, some- 
how, that inner world is inaccessible to Zzs sword. 


134 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


Just then it was, while quite discouraged as to his 
own efforts to deliver himself, he found himself 
delivered. -He was seemingly in a new world. 
Old things had passed away; behold, all things 
had become new. He had been born again; and 
some outside power-had stepped in among the 
springs and foundations of his being, where he 
could not go himself, and had done the indispen- 
sable miracle. He was at no loss to know what 
that power was. 

Now he had read in the Scriptures of all this— 
and only in the Scriptures. Christ had spoken of 
this new birth which is ‘‘not by might nor by 
power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord: all 
other teachers were either silent or contradiéting 
as to it, and to nearly all persons save Christians 
it had an aspect of mystery and even incredibility. 
Born again! how unintelligible, and unlikely, 
and unnecessary in your eyes, O boasting exalter 
of zaturalhumanity. ‘The rational way, so-called, 
of explaining things would explain the marvel 
all away, or at least narrow it down to a feat of 
mere manhood. But there is one person at least 
who knows better. His erpertence has settled the 
matter. It seems that the Scriptures are right. 
They alone have stated things as they are, and 
put the theory of a new life on its proper founda- 
tion. It is only in conneétion with them that 


— 


VY 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 135 


such radical transformations of character take 
place; they alone include a regenerating divinity 
who does for man what man cannot do for him- 
self. Homo does not need to go outside of his 
own personal history to know that the secret of 
the Lord is with the Bible and Christ: that these 
are the only possessors of the talisman for trans- 
ferring character from death to life. Surely, 
there is small room for unbelief in a man who has 
felt the omnipotence of God regenerating him on 
the basis of the Christian Scriptures. 

Accordingly, the lake-bed is fast becoming 
full, “kdthat last broad, deep ‘stream from the 
mountains has nearly covered all the sand bars 
and islands. 

8. Experience of wholesome adaptations. 

Before this, Homo had noticed in a vague way 
the wholesome tendency of the Christian religion. 
So far as it had affeéted him, the effect had been 
salutary: restraining as with a bridle at points 
where he needed restraint; urging forward as with ~ 
a spur at points where he needed urging. And 
his own experience, he knew, was that of all 
about him. ‘They had all felt Christianity as a 
sort of oxygen in the general atmosphere, stimu- 
lating spiritual life. ‘They had all felt it as a 


- gentle lifting power, pressing society with all its 


immense gravitations upward under its whole 


136 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


broad base. Indeed, as a result of his experience 
with himself and others, he had come to see, if 
not to say, that if society were to yield itself fully 
to this gentle, persuasive up-lift, it would soon 
rise into the mid-heaven of a golden age. 

But now that he has become regenerate, he 
has come into a fuller knowledge of the Bible, 
and yields himself more fully to its influences. 
As a result, he understands these influences bet- 
ter. Even as there is nothing like living in the 
same house with a man for finding out what he 
is, so there is nothing like practising Christianity 
to let one into the secret of its quality. And that 
quality our now praétical Christian finds to be 
supreme; finds that the religion he has come to 
live with is even more aromatic and sweet-tem- 
pered and helpful than he had supposed. 

His Christian experience goes on. And as it 
goes on, his sense of the general adaptation of 
Christianity to the various needs of human na- 
ture and life goes on strengthening. He often 
finds himself weak; but also finds on trial that 
his religion, beyond anything else, has a faculty 
for giving strength. He finds himself, from time 
to time, afflicted in many ways; but he also finds 
that his religion is great in its power to sustain 
and comfort. ‘Tempted and sinful is he still from 
day to day; but he has daily fresh experience of 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 137 


the upholding and conquering power of the truth 
as it isin Jesus. He finds it quite incomparable 
in these respects. Its promises meet his purest 
and highest aspirations. Its precepts satisfy his 
conscience. ‘The hopes it suggests, the fears it 
appeals to, the tastes and convictions it cherishes, 
buttress his infant virtue on every side. He finds 
no exigency to which it cannot minister, no strait 
place which it cannot enlarge, no low place which 
it cannot exalt, no vacancy which it cannot fill. 
For every side of his want it seems to have an an- 
swering side of help. Each varying aspect of his 
heart and life finds itself matched by some ade- 
quate spiritual provision which it holds invitingly 
forth in radiant hand. It seems made for him, or 
he for it, the mutual adjustment is so exquisite. 
Not more exquisite is the adjustment of ball to 
socket, of light to eye, of air to lungs, of the fruit- 
bearing earth, with its trees and waters and moun- 
tains and mines of coal and oil and iron and gold, 
to the various needs of society. Look where he 
will, he can see no friend so resourceful and gen- 
-erous as this. No, not on all his wide horizon— 
whether his need be daily bread, or pardon, cour- 
age, hope, sympathy, comfort, strength, knowl- 
edge, goodness, usefulness, heaven. Ah, is not 
the Gospel just such a comprehensive and versa- 
tile helper as one would naturally look for from 


Tempted to Unbelief. I 8 


138 LEMPTED TO CNBELIEF, 


God? When experience has taught him that it 
is a west wind bringing fair weather, a food re- 
freshing and nourishing, a medicine curing pains 
and sickness, a money that ‘‘answers all things’? — 
shall he not believe in it? He does believe more 
than ever. Daily his experience builds away at 
his faith. Annex to annex, year by year the tem- 
ple is sensibly more vast and symmetrical. Or, 
if you remember the natural lake-basin into which 
waters have now for some time been trickling and 
purling and sometimes pouring, until all sand- 
bars and bleak islets have nearly disappeared—lo, 
the roar of another mountain stream is in my ears, 
and the sweet, clear water creeps up the green 
banks till the gleaming, heaven-imaging mirror 
stretches unbroken from shore to shore. 

9. Eapertence of Analogies. 

These analogies are of two sorts: first, those 
between aétual nature and that ideal nature which 
one might reasonably look for from such a being 
as God; second, those between actual nature and 
the Bible, especially as to difficulties in the way 
of believing them to be from God. 

Given such a God as the Bible speaks of, and 
we should expect that a nature from his hands 
would be vast, enduring, various (though with 
certain great veins of unity running through it), 
presided over by law, prodigious in its dynamics, 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 139 


abounding in miracles of contrivance, showing in 
wonderful mixture the beautiful, the grand, the 
gentle, the awful, and the mysterious—and so on. 
On turning to the actual nature we find in it all 
these traits; and scholarly inquiry is able to show 
other resemblances to almost any extent. 

There are also striking resemblances between 
the scheme of nature and the Scriptures. It is 
objected to the Book that it has not yet found its 
way to all mankind: neither have the natural 
sciences. It is obje€ted to the Book that it came 
into the world in detached portions and at differ- 
ent times: but so have come all the systems of 
knowledge and art in our possession. It is ob- 
jected to the Book that in parts it is obscure and 
even as yet impossible to be understood: and yet 
how like this is to that book of nature which 
sages have pored over for thousands of years, and 
still have hardly begun to understand. It is ob- 
jected to the Book that it is open to different inter- 
pretations, and that different sects contend over 
the same passage with equal sincerity and heat: 
but is not as much true of the laws of health, the 
laws of mind and matter, the laws of the land— 
many of which are read different ways by ingeni- 
ous men, and disputed over quite as warmly as 
any theological question? It is objeéted to the 
Book that it has its counterfeits and rejecters, its 


140 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


Apocryphas, Korans, Antichrists, infidels: pray, 
has not almost every natural truth over against it 
an error that apes it, and tries to pass for it, and 
takes its name, and enlists supporters? It is ob- 
jected to the Book that it teaches a God of vast 
severity as well as gentleness: but is not just this 
sort of God seen everywhere in nature? ‘That it 
teaches a limited probation for man: but is not 
nature full of such probations? ‘That it teaches 
salvation by atonement and mediatorship of an- 
other: but are not the world and the ages full of 
deliverances by such means? ‘These are speci- 
mens from a long list of things on account of 
which the Bible is objected to, all of which have 
their counterparts in the book we call nature. 
And so the mind is drawn toward the idea of a 
common authorship for both. 

Now Homo never formally set himself down 
to study out these analogies; never even distin¢tly 
stated them to himself after the manner of philos- 
ophers; yet, living for years in the midst of both 
nature and Christianity, with that openness of 
mind that belongs to those who have come into 
sympathy with God and his works, he has insen- 
sibly drunk in a vague sense of the fact that such 
analogies do exist and even reign. Does not a 
blind man often perceive the general likeness of 
two rooms to each other, on entering and speak- 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 141 


ing in them, without individualizing the points of 
agreement? Homo has not individualized; but 
somehow his mind has unconsciously secreted 
from his surroundings a sense of the exceeding 
likeness of that room which we call Revelation 
to that other vaulted room which we call Nature, 
and of both to that ideal room which one might 
reasonably look for from a Divine Builder. It 
came to him as in a mist. He secreted it as 
quietly and unconsciously as the various organs 
of the body secrete flesh and bone and sinew. He 
absorbed it as insensibly as a plant with its thou- 
sand leaves and rootlets absorbs moisture and heat 
and every needed element from air and soil; never 
noisily, never in masses, always in a state of un- 
speakable division. As the sap steals up the trees 
on the approach of spring, as the dew settles on 
the green earth in the still summer eve, as dewy 
sleep settles on the slowly-closing eyelids of 
healthy babes the whole year round, so softly set- 
tled the feeling of these wonderful harmonies into 
the soul of Homo out under the open sky of his 
Christian experience. 

And what did these harmonies, softly descend- 
ing about his faith like innumerable snowflakes, 
do for it? “They whitened and brightened it. 
They imbedded and supported it. Each like- 
ness of aétual nature to that which God would 


142 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


naturally be expeéted to make, is an encourage- 
ment to believe in Him. Each difficulty in the 
Bible that sees over against itself in nature a twin 
difficulty, goes for nothing with a man who be- 
lieves that nature is from God. Each whispers 
to faith, ‘‘ It looks as if you were right.’ And 
though each whispers with a voice so tiny that 
separately it cannot be heard, yet the chorus of 
these whispers, especially in that whispering gal- 
lery of a renewed soul, needs no microphone to 
interpret it. The ‘‘cloud of witnesses’? makes 
itself distin¢étly audible. It is as audible as the 
cloud itself is visible—a cloud no single vapory 
particle of which can be seen by itself, but whose 
ageregate easily appears to the eye, and perhaps 
shines forth as a cloudy glory where the setting sun 
is picturing in gems and gold a bright to-morrow. 

And now the lake, whose waters had crept up 
the green banks till it was all one unbroken mir- 
ror from shore to shore, sees its crystal flood rise 
still higher, as day after day it has lain drenched 
in morning mists that were almost rains—a water 
without shallows, a water to swim in, a water 
which geographers begin to think deserving of 
notice and name. 

10. Experience with prayers and promises. 

From the outset of his Christian life our friend 
had been receiving answers to prayer and fulfil- 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 143 


ments of Scripture promises; generally in a very 
quiet way and in no striking form. There was 
nothing that one could tell to convince gainsay- 
ers; still, on the bosom of his current of experi- 
ence as a praying person, there gradually drifted 
in upon him many tokens, whose aggregate was 
at length very considerable, that he was dealing 
with a prayer-hearing God. And, on some bright 
day, he got an answer so circumstantially related 
to his prayer as to be well nigh as convincing as 
a New Testament miracle. From time to time 
he was learning of like experiences by others. 
He met with whole books made up of them—ex- 
periences so well attested that practically they 
became his own. Also promises, Bible promises, 
were quietly fulfilled to him. Promises to the 
filial, to the liberal, to the believing, to the 
tempted, to the afflicted; engagements and quasi- 
engagements of this sort, which the Bible freely 
makes, were continually being met and cancelled. 
Thus, in the course of years, presumptions, prob- 
abilities, proofs, conviétions were silently depos- 
ited in that Christian soul, as the dew in the still 
night, as the coral island beneath the sea, as the 
delta at the mouth of some majestic river. Start- 
ing thousands of miles away, sweeping down 
through rich and crumbling banks, turbid at 
length with the spoils and fatness of many a 


144 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


land—what a magnificent accumulation it finally 
unloads in the neighborhood of the sea! Such 
was the fund of experiences and conviétions that 
at last accumulated in the soul of Homo in favor 
of special providence and a continual personal in- 
terference of God in human affairs in the interest 
and name of Jesus Christ. 

So experience has been again building on the 
already templed structure. So the lake which 
from so inconsiderable a beginning had grown to 
be geographical, has seen the sweet flood creeping 
up still higher on its green banks (is it the early 
and the latter rains, or has some Cyrus, God-led, 
diverted hither an arm of the Euphrates?) till 
now great, deep-draughted barges go white-winged 
everywhere upon it, and men can cast net and 
bring it up ‘‘full of great fishes, a hundred and 
fifty and three.’’ 

11. Experience of Holy Living. 

For some years Homo has been having such 
an experience. He has not been without his 
sins; times of spiritual declension have come to 
him; the tide has sometimes ebbed as well as 
flowed; but on the whole the waters have been 
gaining on the shore, as the sea is slowly gaining, 
year by year, on our New England coast. Prayers, 
Scriptures, Sabbaths, sanétuaries, trials, prosper- 
ities, Christian fellowships—in short, the means 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 145 


of grace—have gradually done on him a san¢ctify- 
ing work. His sinfulness has abated. His right- 
eousness has grown. He is a sounder, healthier, 
better character to-day than ever before—more 
conscientious, principled, and thorough in his 
piety; in short, we see ‘‘ the path of the just that 
shineth more and more.”’ 

Now, really, this is the same thing as saying 
that his faztz has been growing. Sin is a won- 
derful obscurer of evidences and breeder of doubts. 
To abate sin is to repair and ennoble the soul. 
To abate sin is to do something toward removing 
a cataract from the eyes. ‘To abate sin is to pro- 
mote candor, to correét the judgment, to clear 
away mists and smokes of many aname. Sin is 
smokier than Birmingham. How can one geta 
fair view of the sun among all these belching 
chimneys? Sin is really the source of a// unbe- 
lief; and it is on this account that unbelief is 
always treated in the Bible as criminal and pun- 
ishable. Could any skeptic be thoroughly emp- 
tied of sin, he would at once rise into faith as a 
balloon springs aloft when all its weights are cast 
out. And it is not hard to see how this may well 
be. We might presume that wrong-doing would 
incapacitate the soul; that a clogged, deranged, 
and broken machine would do poor work; that 
sooty fingers would blacken and blur every white 


Tempted to Unbelief. iE 9 


146 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF, 


page of truth which they handle. ‘The experience 
of Christians is to this effeét. ‘T‘hey find that the 
better they live the better do they believe. They 
find that going toward sin is the same thing as 
going away from God and his Word; that one 
may go away so far that these great faéts dwarf 
on the eye, and finally pass out of view. 

Accordingly, Homo found a process of sanéti- 
fication to be one of enlightenment. He grew 
wiser because he grew better. His atmosphere 
gradually cleared up. Shutters fell back and 
windows were lifted. Cindery particles, one by 
one, dropped from his eyes; and, finally, leaning 
forth from the open casement, he could see, not 
only the sun, but the blue and even the stars. 
He felt fulfilled to him the promise, The pure in 
heart shall see God; felt that, diverging farther 
and farther from Satan, he had been getting far- 
ther and farther from one ‘‘ who blinds the minds 
of them who believe-not, lest the light of the glo- 
rious Gospel should shine unto them.”? 

This faith-producing experience has acted 
chiefly in the way of removing obstacles. Streams 
that naturally trended toward the lake had dropped 
suddenly into pits, caverns, thirsty sand-wastes, 
or, like the Jordan, into some Dead Sea, and dis- 
appeared; or, becoming dammed up by rocks and 
ruins, had been turned aside to stranger destina- 


ee 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 147 


tions. But these obstructions having gradually 
been taken away, the waters have come to flow 
freely on to their proper outlet; and now the wide 
lake, alive with white wings of business and 
pleasure, and whose waters have been creeping 
up and up so long, at last quietly purls over into 
yon lowland meadow, which straightway becomes 
green as an emerald. 

12. Experience of the Witnessing Spirit. 

Eemaiesays,4) hy believe’); You ask hint 
‘‘Why do you believe?’? He answers, ‘‘I have 
no reason which I can express in words: I only 
know that somehow I believe.’’ Is he unreasona- 
ble? Not necessarily. Is not God able to create, 
out of hand, faith in a soul that freely puts itself 
in his hand? Cannot He who made the soul 
make in it that state which we call faith, apart 
from a logical foundation for it? Or, if you do 
not like this way of stating, cannot He reveal 
himself and his religion rectly to the inner vis- 
ion, without the intervention of certain premises 
from which they can be inferred, so that they be- 
come axioms to us? ‘Io God all truths must be 
axiomatic: to ourselves some truths are so already, 
and, as our powers expand, the list will gradually 
enlarge by the transfer to it of secondary and in- 
ferred truths; and how easy must it be to God to 
hasten at any point this natural advance! No 


148 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF, 


doubt he can do it. Indeed, that he has done it 
seems a matter of conscious experience with some 
Christians—with some, not with all. ‘They seem 
aware of a strange light within. They feel, as it 
were, the guiding touch of a mysterious hand 
along the highways of thought. Is it a real voice 
that sounds within? Not that exactly, but a sub- 
tile vibration through all the chambers of the soul, 
as if from a voice saying, ‘‘ This is the way, this 
the truth, this the life.’ It is the voice of the 
Spirit, speaking always (note it well !) according 
to the testimony of his written Word. ‘‘ Hereby 
know we the Spirit of God.” ‘‘If they speak ot 
according to this word, it is because there is no 
light in them.’ 

Now, this voice, this kingly voice, this voice 
that rises easily above the voices of all other 
witnesses, while chording with them, was heard 
by Homo. Jesus promised that his disciples 
should be dwelt in by the Holy Spirit; that He 
should become to them a witness-bearer, testify- 
ing of Christ, taking of the things of Christ and 
showing them. So, ever since he became a dis- 
ciple, this disciple has been having a Divine 
Guest, with his silent yet eloquent witnessing to 
God, his Son, and his Word; having him more 
and more as time went on and his soul opened 
room after room, with growing hospitality, to the 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. 149 


joy-giving inhabitant. And now, how brightly 
shines the candle of the Lord within! What an 
unétion of the Holy One is on his eyelids! How 
his understanding opens heavenward as a bud 
opens toward the sun when the new life within is 
pressing into blossom! And he says with Job, 
‘“T have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, 
but now mine eye seeth thee.”’ 

Ah, here is the supreme addition to faith. 
Behold the key-stone of a glorious arch before 
whose superb proportions all earthly architectures 
are mean and deformed! Behold the coronation- 
day of faith, when the king comes forth to the 
people in robe and diadem and all royal state, 
and the air quakes with trumpets, and a nation 
shouts, ‘‘God save the king!” 

Or, if you will recall a figure now old, but 
truthful, the natural lake-basin, at first moist 
with native springs and gradually receiving vari- 
ous contributions from sky and uplands till its 
waters brim over into low-lying meadows, 1s now 
receiving the greatest contribution of all. Yon- 
der cliff on its margin, Horeb-like, has been 
smitten with the vod of God; and crystal floods, 
enough for a host, are flowing, flowing, and sing- 
ing as they flow. Down pour the waters in 
thunder and rainbows on the plain, delighting 
the eye of the pilgrim, and carrying refreshment 


150 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


and health and prosperity to villages and cities 
far away. 

So Homo came toa grand faith, and as rea- 
sonable as grand, wholly in the way of experi- 
ence. 

He began with the promptings of a relig- 
1ously constituted human nature. ’Then came 
those of a careful Christian training. His expe- 
rience with life proceeded to inform him that 
probability, and in certain cases even possibility, 
is not only the usual guide of men, but is enough 
to bind the judgment and conscience even in 
gravest matters; and that it is a very safe and 
profitable thing for one to do, to assume and aét 
upon the truth of both Theism and Christianity. 
So he set his face praétically towards religion. 
Then followed those two great experiences which 
we call conviction and regeneration—two private 
miracles in the interest of Christianity; the one a 
miracle of revelation, and the other a miracle of 
restoration, and enough in themselves to found 
an empire—an empire of faith. From this point, 
his mind opened, asa flower under spring suns, to 
a feeling of the harmonies of nature with Revela- 
tion, and of both with that system one would 
naturally expect from a Divine government. So 
difficulties quietly disappeared. From this point 
he experienced sanctification, itself a natural foe 


CONSULTING EXPERIENCE. ISt 


of error, an opener of eyes, a dissipater of mists, 
a restorer to the soul of that polarity by which 
it originally pointed toward God and God’s 
truth. And from this point, too, he had a 
growing experience of fulfilled prayer and Scrip- 
ture promises. But the crown of all his experi- 
ences was his experience of the Holy Ghost as a 
self-luminous witness to the truth—a still, small 
voice, or rather the soul of a voice, the innermost 
essence of its meaning and power, a vibration of 
the spirit instead of the air, penetrating and in- 
terpenetrating all other grosser witnessings, set- 
ting them aglow, and welding them together into 
a bright and massive unity, as does the electric 
arrow a sheaf of steel spear-heads found in its 
path. Andso Homo came to a mighty faith, by 
which he triumphantly lived, and in which he 
triumphantly died. 

Could not anyone have a like faith by a like 
experience? With a single exception, that whole 
system of experiences is open to the general pub- 
lic. All cannot have that careful Christian train- 
ing which Homo enjoyed; but without this, val- 
uable as it is, one may still go on from strength 
to strength as a believer, till he appears in Zion 
before God and sees what he has believed. His 
case is that of an archer with many strings to his 
bow; of a great capitalist who has so many 


152 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


sources of income, that he can live, and even 
splendidly accumulate, though one great source 
is cut off. It is a great misfortune to be cut off 
from a Christian nurture; but there are streams 
of experience enough left to fill the lake-basin to 
overflowing. Repentance itself is enough to found 
a faith; and a course of conscientious living and 
praying can enlarge it to almost any extent. 

Try it, O man. You who say that it is the 
sincere, nay, the dearest wish of your heart to 
know the truth, TRvy it, I say, or for ever after 
hold your peace. 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 153 


X. 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 


SPEAKING of those who objeét to Christianity, 
the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson said, ‘‘It is 
always easy to be on the negative side. Ifa man 
were now to deny that there is salt on the table, 
you could not reduce him to an absurdity. Come, 
let us try this a little further. I deny that Canada 
is taken, and I can support my denial by pretty 
good arguments. ‘The French are a much more 
numerous people than we, and it is not likely 
that they would allow us to take it. ‘But the 
ministry have assured us, in all the formality of 
the Gazette, that it istaken.’ Very true. But 
the ministry have put us to an enormous expense 
by the war in America, and it is their interest to 
persuade us that we have got something for our 
money. ‘But the fa&t is confirmed by thousands 
of men who were at the taking of it.’ Ay, but 
these men have still more interest in deceiving us. 
They don’t want that you should think the French 
have beat them, but that they have beat the 
French. Now, suppose that you should go over 
and find that it really is taken; that would only 


Tempted to Unbelief. 20 


154 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


satisfy yourself; for when you come home we will 
not believe you. We will say you have been 
bribed. Yet, sir, notwithstanding all these plau- 
sible objections, we have no doubt that Canada is 
really ours. Such is the weight of common 
testimony. How much stronger are the evi- 
dences of the Christian religion !’’ 

It being the easiest thing in the world to 
make objections to anything whatever, one ought 
not to be surprised to find that very many objec- 
tions have been made against both the Scriptures 
and Theism. 

A general answer to these may be given by 
showing that whatever difficulties there may be 
in the way of faith, there are still greater in the 
way of unbelief; also, that most of the allegations 
against the Scriptures are equally valid against 
a personal Author of Nature, and that the sort of 
reasoning that is good against Him is just as good 
against received science, and indeed against the 
commonest axioms of morals. 

Two objections deserve special consideration, 
because of their comprehensiveness, and of the 
prominence which their friends have lately given 
them. .:One of these is. against Theism, and, 
under the name of Evolution, teaches that matter 
is eternal, and by means solely of its own forces 
and laws has gradually wrought itself out into 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 155 


the whole universe as known to us. This notion 
seems to me fitly characterized by Montesquieu: 
‘Those who have said that a blind fatality has 
produced all the effects we see in the world, have 
said a great absurdity; for what greater absurdity 
than a blind fatality which produces intelligent 
beings?’ But I do not propose to dwell upon the 
Evolution hypothesis here, as I have discussed it 
at length in the two volumes of Pater Mundt, aim- 
ing to show that, compared with the alternative 
Theistic hypothesis for explaining nature, it is far 
less sure, simple, sublime, salutary and safe, as 
well as far less in accord with the natural thought 
and traditions of mankind; and that therefore, in 
obedience to received canons of philosophy, as 
well as of common prudence, it ought to be 
rejected; showing that while the sufficiency of 
the Theistic hypothesis to explain nature is evi- 
dent at a glance to all minds, that of Evolution 
can never be proved to the great mass of mankind on 
account of the recondite and concatenated charac- 
ter of its arguments; so that if the public at large 
accept it at all, it must be on a principle of faith 
abhorrent to the whole skeptical scheme—save 
that it would be faith in Darwin, Huxley, and 
Tyndall instead of God—showing that it cannot be 
proved even to scholars of the highest grade, for 
the very good reason that such proof would contra- 


156 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


dict a great variety of fa€ts both on the earth and in 
the heavens, as expressed in well-known sciences. 
That the doétrine of Evolution has not been proved 
thus far, after a great deal of effort, is confessed 
by the ablest of its friends. Its two pillars, Spon- 
taneous Generation and the Natural Transmuta- 
tation of Species, still bear the name of hypotheses ; 
and by conscientious and carefuly examining 
men everywhere the utmost that can be granted 
is that it is a chain of guesses and analogies 
strung with scientific faéts, valuable indeed in 
themselves and serving to ornament the chain 
and attract attention to it, but having no es- 
sential connection with it, and adding nothing 
whatever to its strength. Let the memorable 
words of Agassiz be remembered: ‘‘I enter my 
earnest protest against the Transmutation theory. 
The philosopher’s stone is no more to be found in 
the organic than the inorganic world; and we 
shall seek as vainly to transform the lower animal 
types into the higher ones by any of our theories 
as did the alchemists of old to change the baser 
metals into gold.” 

The other objeétion is against the Scriptures; 
and claims that the drift of recent researches ts to 
show that the origin of man ts much farther back 
than the Scriptures will allow us to place it. As 
this is one of the most pretentious of modern 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 157 


objections, has had exceeding stress laid on it by 
unbelievers, and like its friend the Theory of 
Development, assumes to speak in the great 
names of the ripest learning and science, let us 
give it special consideration. Perhaps this will 
show better than any other one thing how rash 
and uncertain is much that is called science, and 
how numerous the retreats it has been obliged to 
sound in the course of its attacks on religion. 
‘‘Heypt has a tradition that gives her more 
than forty-eight thousand years of national life; and 
a large part of this immense period is covered by 
formal annals. China and India, to say nothing of 
Chaldea, are hardly behind in the magnificence of 
their claims. Must these claims go for nothing ?”’ 
They might as well. The Orientals are pro- 
verbial for large and showy statements. With a 
very moderate capital of fa¢ts they will build you 
an Aladdin’s palace. It is rather wonderful than 
otherwise that with so much real antiquity about 
them the nations just cited put their age at so 
moderate a figure. Forty-eight thousand years! 
Forty-eight mzz//zons would hardly have surprised 
one who knows the people. What more credible 
than that some patriotic Manetho or Berosus, 
wishing to flatter the national vanity, orientalized 
his faéts and made his countrymen a present of a 
few thousand years that did not belong to them— 


158 TEMPTED. TO ONBELTEF, 


an outcome of the same feeling that leads the 
child to appear as old as possible and the noble to 
rejoice in a long pedigree! Accordingly, when 
these ‘‘high and mighty’’ traditions are closely 
examined they are found to contain so much that 
is transparently fabulous as to utterly discredit 
their testimony. 


‘‘But look at the present high physical and | 


mental grade of many men. We can hardly 
imagine more perfect human bodies than we often 
see; and as to minds, certainly the display is 
fully as splendid. How long would it take to 
develop apes, or savages near akin to apes, into 
such specimens of humanity? Looking back 
some twenty-five centuries into Greece we find 
among her athletes and heroes and maidens figures 
not perceptibly less perfe¢ét; and among her poets, 
statesmen, philosophers, orators, and historians 
minds not perceptibly less capacious and dynami- 
cal than the best of our own times. At Mentone 
in France has been found the skeleton of a man 
belonging apparently tg a much more remote 
time, yet the frame a) skull are as well devel- 
oped as in the most advanced of present races. 
At this snail-rate of progress how far, far away 
must be the first almost brutal men! Certainly, 
almost countless ages.”’ 

But who has given this man leave to assume 


i 


SAMPLE SCIENCE, 159 


_ that we have apes, or even savages, for ancestors ? 
Quite a considerable part of the best scholarship 
of the world is not yet prepared to grant this, but 
on the contrary firmly maintains, not only on the 
ground of the Bible, but also on grounds of learned 
research, that the orignal humanity, both bodily 
and mental, was of a high order. So teach the 
great traditions of the world—all pointing to a 
primal golden age in which men were almost 
demi-gods of beauty and strength as well as inno- 
cence. So teaches history as expressed in docu- 
ments and monuments. ‘‘So far as history speaks 
at all,’’ says Prof. Rawlinson, than whom no liv- 
ing man is better entitled to speak on this subject, 
‘it is in favor of a primitive race of men, not 
indeed equipped with all the arts and appliances 
of our modern civilization, but substantially civil- 
ized, possessing language, thought, intelligence, 
conscious of a Divine Being, quick to form the 
conception of tools and to frame them as it needed 
them, early developing many of the useful and 
elegant arts, and only sinking by degrees and 
under peculiar circumstances into the savage con- 
dition.’’ But, even supposing the earliest men 
to have been of the rudest in body and mind, who 
has a right to say that it must have taken a hun- 
dred thousand years, or even ten thousand, to 
ripen them into the present men?. Does it follow 


160 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


that because a man has only grown a millionth 
part of an inch in forty years that all the preced- 
ing growth of six feet was made at the same rate? 
How many hundred years did it take to change 
our wild English forefathers into ourselves; or 
the cannibals of the Fiji Islands into 800 Chris- 
tian churches of very respectable Englishmen ? 
The fact is that improvement in individuals, com- 
munities, and institutions often proceeds by great 
leaps; and it is very suggestive that the little 
child makes a greater relative gain during its 
first few years than ever afterward. 

‘‘But just look at the varietzes of mankind ; 
and especially at the wide difference between the 
Negro and the Caucasian. Your theory is that 
these came from one stock. How long would it 
take such large divergence to ripen under natural 
conditions? Send a white family to Africa, and 
see whether in generations their noses perceptibly 
flatten or lips perceptibly thicken. On Egpytian 
monuments near 4,000 years back the negro is 
pictured quite as we see him to-day. Surely 
even at that far back time the races had already 
been diverging for almost countless centuries !’ 

An answer to this lies in two fatts. Fzrst: A 
family sometimes changes vastly by a single leap, 
parents finding their child vastly superior or infe- 
rior to themselves in point of both body and mind. 


. hw 
: tee 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 161 


Second: ‘There are instances of whole communities 
gradually sinking in the course of a few centuries 
from a high physical and mental standing to a 
state in which they are almost caricatures of their 
former selves. For example, take the Weddas of 
of Ceylon. And Hugh Miller tells us of a com- 
munity of native Irish who two hundred years 
ago were a fine type of men, but, being cast out of 
their native seat and subjeéted to various unto- 
ward conditions, have now come to have crooked 
and stunted forms, projecting mouths, retreating 
foreheads—almost caricaturing human nature. In 
view of such facts it certainly is by no means 
clear that a millennium or two of such circum- 
stances as most Africans have long been subject 
to might not suffice to make all the difference 
between them and ourselves—even if they are 
not the descendants of a man who fell under a 
Divine curse, whose potent alchemy changed gold 
into iron instead of iron into gold. 

‘‘But have you considered the phenomena of 
language? We now have some hundreds of lan- 
guages so widely apart, both as spoken and writ- 
ten, as to be utterly unintelligible to each other. 
A complete congress of them would offer as vio- 
lent contrasts as a complete congress of animals. 
Set all the tongues to saying the Lord’s Prayer 
together, and it would be chaos instead of con- 


Tempted to Unbelief. et 


162 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


cord. Babel itself would be confounded. And 
this divergence among languages was as great ten 
thousand years ago as it is to-day; for about so far 
back date the Greek of Homer and the Sanscrit 
of the Vedas. How long would it take languages 
springing from a common stock—as it 1s now gen- 
erally agreed among leading scholars that they 
did—to part company so widely? How long 
would it take the rude beginnings of speech to 
graduate into such noble tongues as the ancient 
Greek and Sanscrit, which almost sing and reason 
of themselves—even supposing there were no set- 
backs in the current of progress? Certainly, al- 
most countless ages.”’ 

But, my friend, we must not allow you to for- 
get that a large part of scholars still hold that lan- 
guage did not grow up from the seed, was not 
invented by man, and has not been left altogether 
to natural laws in its development. ‘The Bible 
says that speech was supernaturally confounded. 
On these views, man need not be so very old to 
account for the noble ancient languages and the 
wide difference between them. <A hundred years 
back of Homer and the Vedas would do as well as 
a hundred thousand. Besides, the natural changes 
in languages are often by no means slow. Com- 
pare modern Greek with the ancient. See what 
the Latin has become in France, Spain, and Italy 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 163 


within our own era. Nay, the English of our 
own Spenser is almost a dead language to us; and 
even so late a writer as Shakespeare needs a glos- 
sary to bring him fully within reach of his own 
countrymen. The uniformitarian theory must 
be largely discounted from in Philology as well as 
Geology. Every now and then come great par- 
oxysms and freshets of change which do the work 
of centuries in a few years. These must have 
been far more frequent in early times; and lan- 
guages then were far less anchored by a copious 
and widespread literature. 

‘‘But you should consider the zgh sctence and 
art of very remote times—the astronomical lore of 
Chaldea, China, India, Egypt, for which an anti- 
quity of many thousands of years before Christ 
has been claimed by eminent scholars; and espe- 
cially the evidences of an extremely early civili- 
zation on the banks of the Nile. As far back as 
we can descry the Greeks at all, we see them 
facing reverently toward Egypt as the mother of 
knowledge. Homer sang of ‘hundred- gated 
Thebes’ about ten centuries before Christ; and 
from that time down all the most eminent of his 
countrymen sought wisdom and culture where 
Moses is said to have found it—in the empire of 
the Pharaohs. Among these was the historian 
Herodotus. He tells us that five hundred years 


164 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


before Christ he found in Egypt pyramids, tem- 
ples, cities, immense works of civil-engineering— 
works that even now are the wonder of the 
world—already hoary with immemorial antiquity. 
Such things did not spring up, like a mushroom, 
in a night. Pallas Athene may have leaped in 
full stature and armor from the head of Jupiter; 
but as to the Egyptian culture becoming a splen- 
did goddess all at once, or in anything less than 
a long stretch of centuries, the thing is not to be 
thought of by scholars.”’ 

We must allow that a great battle has been 
fought over such arguments. But the smoke has 
cleared away somewhat; and we now find our- 
selves in possession of the following faét: ‘‘A con- 
sensus of savants and scholars almost unparalleled 
limits the past history of civilized man to a date 
removed from our own time by less than 4,400 
years, excepting in a single instance. ‘There re- 
mains one country, one civilization with respect 
to which the learned are at variance; there being 
writers of high repute who place the dawn of 
Egyptian civilization about 2700 B. C., while 
there are others who postulate for it an antiquity 
exceeding this by above 2,400 years.’’? ‘This late 
statement of Prof. Rawlinson gives us the extreme 
figures in one direction. In the other, scholars of 
the first mark date back the earliest Nile monu- 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 165 


ments to even less than 1800 B. C. Between 
these two points the whole ground is hotly con- 
tested; but the tendency of the strife has been 
steadily toward the lower figures. Surrender after 
surrender of the most positive and ‘‘scientific”’ 
conclusions has been made, until it would not be 
surprising if the date of the earliest Egyptian 
monuments should be fixed considerably within 
the twentieth century before Christ. Most of 
them, as the palaces and temples of Karnac and 
Luxor, are now allowed to have been made far 
within that date. And but little, if at all, beyond 
it—in the view of Champollion, Sir John Her- 
schell, Sir J. G. Wilkinson, Prof. Rawlinson, and 
other such scholars—stand the pyramids, confess- 
edly the oldest of the antiquities. 

As to the additional years needed for the 
growth of the population, power, and culture that 
could produce the Egyptian monuments, it would 
be hard to show that a thousand years would not 
amply suffice. Only assume that the original 
ancestor, instead of being next-door neighbor to 
an ape, was such a man as Noah is said to have 
been, the heir of more than a thousand years of 
experience and culture, and there is not the 
slightest difficulty. The amazing fertility of 
Egypt would draw to it the streams of population 
like a mighty magnet, and the fresh, vigorous 


166 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


stock would ‘‘multiply exceedingly.’’ Just think 
what advances have been made in the United 
States during the last two hundred years; in view 
of them one is almost tempted to affirm that a 
like period would be quite sufficient to fill the nar- 
row Nile-valley with people and monuments. A 
thousand years is a very generous allowance. But 
make it two thousand or even three. ‘This last is 
an extravagant concession; but let us make it, 
and then say that whoever puts the origin of man 
farther back than 5000 B. C. is enormously un- 
reasonable. 

‘‘But after all, the main thing, because the 
most scientific, is the evidence of extreme anti- 
quity furnished by ¢he researches of geologists. 
Bones and works of men have been found so deep 
beneath the surface of the earth, or in such other 
situations, as imply a very remote origin—almost 
countless ages back. In the Deltas of the Nile 
and the Mississippi articles of human origin have 
been found at such depths that if we suppose the 
deposition of mud to have been uniform at pres- 
ent rates, man must have existed for millions of 
years. Some two hundred villages have been 
found beneath the beds of the Swiss lakes, some 
of them overlaid by thick beds of peat. Also, in 
various parts of Europe have been found caves 
occupied by the bones and implements of primi- 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 167 


tive men, in connection with the remains of ex- 
tinét species of reindeer, bears, lions, elephants, 
hippopotami, belonging to the close of the Glacial 
Period, a period which some Geologists of note 
think must have been almost inconceivably re- 
mote.’ 

How unreliable inferences from the depth of 
river deposits above human remains are, may be 
judged from a single example. A piece of Roman 
pottery has been found ninety feet below the sur- 
face of the Nile Delta. A hundred things besides 
gravity and depravity go hard to carry man and 
his works downward; and mud of all kinds is an 
easy thing tosink in. As to the pile settlements 
of the Swiss lakes, some of them contain articles 
of Roman times; and it is now conceded by lead- 
ing Geologists that even those under the thickest 
peat may be not much older, since beds of peat 
fifteen feet thick have been known to form within 
historic times. As to the cave remains, the fol- 
lowing things may be said. /zrst: In some cases 
all the fa¢ts may be explained by supposing that 
men occupied caves that ages before had been 
occupied by the brutes whose remains are found. 
Second: In other cases the faéts are explainable by 
supposing that the various contents of the caves 
were brought together by streams flowing across 
several different formations, and so collecting 


168 LEMPLIEDVULO tONGELTEL 


things belonging to widely different eras. Third: 
We do not yet know how far back to put the Gla- 
cial Period, or the extin¢t species of animals, or 
the changes of level sometimes indicated by the 
eaves. ‘The date of all these is still matter of vast 
dispute; and, for aught any can show to the con- 
trary, may well be considerably within 3000 B. C. 
A shifting of the internal fires of the earth would 
easily change the climate of Northern Europe 
from that of Labrador in whose latitude it lies to 
the present; and the operation of such a cause, 
especially if gradual, need not be very far back to 
be beyond the notice of history and tradition. 
From this entire survey we gather that there 
are no traces of man on the globe yet discovered 
that reliably refer him to an earlier date than 
some 4,000 or 5,000 years B. C.; while even a 
much more recent time seems not unlikely to 
come to satisfy all known fa¢ts. This, whether 
one considers the traditions, or the present ad- 
vanced status of portions of mankind, or the wide 
divergence of our races and languages from each 
other, or the great remains of ancient art and 
science, or the fossil footprints of primitive men. 
From no point of the compass, and from no dip 
of the needle, comes any evidence that can prop- 
erly be called scientific, or that is not flighty with 
imagination, that requires us to consider our- 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 169 


selves more than 6,000 or 7,000 years old. We 
cannot allow those who claim more to assume 
that man began as zero—not to say a minus quan- 
tity—and became his present integer by a long 
series of infinitesimal accretions. It yet remains 
to be proved that the childhood of the race was 
not a splendid manhood: that we did not come 
forth full grown and equipped like a goddess to 
our great inheritance. It yet remains to be 
proved that the law of gradualness which we all 
recognize in nature is not yoked to another law 
of volcanic paroxysm and outburst that can bury 
in a day the Pompeii that has been steadily de- 
caying for centuries. The zephyrs that have for 
so long been gently shaking fragrance from the 
flowers suddenly appear as a tempest and lay a 
forest low in a few moments. ‘The ancient quiet 
of Lisbon one day vanishes in the throes of an 
earthquake; and the ancient discontent and mut-. 
terings of the people, at last, on some 18th of 
Brumaire, roar away in a Revolution that shakes, 
not only France, but mankind. 

Now comes a very important inquiry. How 
does this agree with our Bible? We hold this 
Book to be divinely inspired—an infallible and 
complete rule of faith and pra€tice. But there 
are some things now connected with this Book 
which no Christian scholar supposes to be given 


Tempted to Unbelief. 22 


170 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


by inspiration—for example, the binding the book 
happens to have, the quality of the paper it 1s 
printed on, the pictures it sometimes contains, 
the division into chapters and verses made for the 
sake of convenience only a few centuries ago. 
Among things of this uninspired sort some place 
what are called the Biblical Chronologies. We 
do not feel able to do as much. For, while there 
is a certain indeterminateness in regard to time 
in the earlier Bible history, it 1s plain that the 
general tenor of its representations is totally in- 
consistent not only with the extremer views of 
the antiquity of man which have been noticed, 
but also with any that differ very materially from 
those expressed in what are known as the Long 
and Short Scripture Chronologies. On the mar- 
gin of some of our Bibles we find certain dates— 
thus, ‘building of the temple, 1012 Bi C:3" the 
Deluge, 2348°B. C.; the Creation 4004 By Cy" In 
Bibles used in Russia is another set of dates— 
larger than our own by about a thousand years— 
for the principal events. These latter figures are 
got at by a variety of computations, comparisons, 
and arguments based on the Septuagint version 
of the Old Testament—the others by a similar 
process based on the Hebrew text as now held by 
the Jews. Christian scholars are divided as to 
which of these two chronologies is to be pre- 


SAMPLE SCIENCE, 171 


ferred; but of late years the weight of scholar- 
ship is setting very strongly in favor of the 
Greek or long Chronology, for the following, 
among other reasons: The Septuagint text is by 
far the more ancient—that version having been 
made in the third century before Christ, while 
the text of our common Hebrew was settled cen- 
turies later. When first made, the joint work of 
some seventy of the best scholars of the time, the 
Septuagint was enthusiastically received among 
the Jews as admirably representing its Hebrew 
original, was the version used and quoted by 
Jesus and his apostles, as well as by all the early 
fathers and Christian centuries. This certainly 
looks well. And if we accept it, and set down 
the Flood as having occurred 3155 B.C., we have 
an ample supply of time to meet the demands of 
all modern discoveries. But we need not feel 
compelled to take the Long Chronology. The 
Short Chronology will satisfy all but conjectural 
science—which is no science at all. All the ver- 
sions of Scripture agree in making the Deluge 
not over 3155 B. C., and the Creation of man xo 
over 5411 B. C. ‘This general statement harmo- 
nizes finely with all that deserves to be called 
science. 

This antiquity is not very great as compared 
with that of the planet on which we live, or with 


172 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


that of the brute kingdom. But it is enough to 
satisfy a moderate ambition; and, what is of more 
consequence, enough to satisfy all known monu- 
ments and history, especially if we regard the 
race as beginning in a high type. Suppose Adam 
to have been sucha type. He fell morally. For 
about two thousand years man grew in experi- 
ence and the arts of life, as well as in wickedness. 
Then came the Flood, and a new genesis of the 
race, but one that left it heir to the knowledge. 
and skill of all the previous centuries. The stock 
being still fresh and vigorous, and having abun- 
dant room and means of living, naturally ‘‘ mul- 
tiplied exceedingly,’’? and pushed out in every 
direétion, searching out the most fertile districts, 
until in something less than a thousand years it 
had founded cities and an empire on the fertile 
banks of the Nile. Meanwhile, wisps and spurs 
of the advancing nebula made their way to less 
favored and remoter parts, and became the rude 
frontier-men, such as hang on the outskirts of 
our American progress westward, and, gradually 
pressed farther and farther by the thickening 
millions, at last appeared in Northern Europe as 
the cave-dwellers and lake-villagers whose re- 
mains we find. 

It is interesting to notice how difficult subjetts 
gradually clear up in the progress of exploration. 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 173 


_ When the thoughts of men first rush at them they 
are like a stream newly discovered by a herd of 
wild and thirsty animals, and into which they 
have rushed pell-mell—so tossed and turbid that 
the eye cannot pass beneath the surface. Gradu- 
ally, however, the mud settles, and at last the 
stream becomes so clear that the eye reads easily 
all its depths. What crude and extravagant no- 
tions were conceived of America when men began 
to talk about the new continent, almost as wild 
as the Arabian Nights, as to the extent, shape, 
resources, population, of the great twilight realm ! 
But as voyage succeeded to voyage, settlement to 
settlement, and book to book, the accounts grad- 
ually became more moderate and reasonable, and 
the wondrous El Dorados and Fountains of Per- 
petual Youth that made such a figure in the six- 
teenth century at last sobered down into the 
rational geography and statistics of the mnine- 
teenth. Newly opened eyes are apt to see men 
as trees walking. Objects are apt to be magni- 
fied and distorted when seen through fogs and 
twilights. So it has happened in our archaic 
field. At first it seemed gigantic and plethoric 
with antiquity. Its shadows stretched from hori- 
zon to horizon. ‘The astronomic periods almost 
seemed reproduced in human society. But as 
explorer after explorer threaded the wilds of the 


174 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


new land, and fogs and twilight by degrees gave 
way to sunlight, the dragons and other magical 
creatures faded from view; and now we are com- 
ing to quite sober and lifelike views. ‘The yeast- 
ing stage of the glass of soda is almost passed, 
and we begin to get glimpses of the bottom. 

But it is still more interesting to notice how 
such matters are apt to clear up in favor of the 
Bible. On the discovery of the Chinese Astron- 
omy a great thunder of outcry in the name of 
science was made by unbelievers, that its date 
was enormously inconsistent with any possible 
Biblical chronology: but after a while the greater 
discovery was made that the Chinese science was 
not Chinese at all, but Jesuitical; and now zo 
authorities carry back the germ of the nation far- 
ther than 1200 B. C. A somewhat similar history 
belongs to the astronomy of India. In the latter 
part of the last century it was fashionable in the 
scientific world, led by M. Bailly in France and 
Prof. Playfair in England, to credit India with 
native astronomical tables dating back more than 
3000 B. C.; and Chaldea with an astronomy 
equally ripe and hardly less old. ‘The views were 
very positive. Indeed they professed to be dem- 
onstrated. But, La Place leading the way, it is 
at last possible to say that these views are twice 
dead and plucked up by the roots, and that ‘‘the 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 175 


best Aryan scholars place the dawn of Iranic civ- 
ilization about 1500 B. C., of Indic about 1200 
B. C.”? (See Rawlinson’s Origin of Nations.) The 
Zodiacs of Denderah and Esneh, when first exam- 
ined, were pronounced some 17,000 years old; and 
unbelief almost shook the heavens with its tri- 
umphant cheers; but after a while Champollion 
deciphered on one monument an inscription re- 
ferring it to the time of Augustus Ceesar, and on 
the other one referring it to the time of the Anto- 
nines. Now no scholar supposes that either of 
the six representations of the Zodiac found in 
Egypt dates beyond 200 B. C. 

Nearly all the secular sources of information 
on the antiquity of man have a similar history. 
Whether it is language or race or monuments or 
fossil remains, its first aspect frowned porten- 
tously on the Bible; and the enemy shouted and 
waved banners and pointed gleefully at the low- 
ering face, and exclaimed, ‘‘ Behold the Conflict 
with Science!’ But soon the frown began to 
relax, and, in cases not a few, has become a smile 
bright asa summer morning. This has been re- 
peated so often that the friends of the Bible feel 
warranted, solely on the ground of experience, in 
expecting that, however unfavorable first appear- 
ances may be, they will sooner or later clear up in 
favor of the Book——just as we confidently expect 


176 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


that cloudy weather will in time clear up and 
show us a blue sky and undimmed sun. When 
conjecture and suspicion and half-truth get through 
their seething and chaotic state and crystallize 
into real science, then it becomes a glass to aid us 
in seeing things as the Bible sees them—perhaps 
a telescope, perhaps a microscope, perhaps a prism 
gorgeous with spectral analysis. 

Such mutations are in accord with what has 
been the history of science from the beginning. 
The entire way back to the earliest known culti- 
vators of knowledge is strewn with exploded the- 
ories which in their day bore the proud names of 
wisdom, philosophy, and:science. As says Hum- 
boldt in his Cosmos, ‘‘ All works treating of em- 
pirical knowledge and of the conne¢ction of natu- 
ral phenomena and physical laws are subject to 
the most marked modifications in the lapse of 
short periods of time; and those scientific works 
which have, to use a common expression, become 
antiquated by the acquisition of new funds of 
knowledge, are thus continually being consigned 
to oblivion as unreadable.”’ 

The Geography taught by the seven wise men 
of Greece and their Egyptian teachers, as well as 
through all the palmier period of Athens and 
Rome, without question, has been dead and bur- 
ied many a century. 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 177 


Most of the early Greek representatives of 
Science, including Socrates, held that the laws of 
the external world were no proper objeéts of re- 
search; men should rather give themselves to the 
study of metaphysics. The present time sees 
Natural Science become a colossus overshadowing 
everything, and indeed quite generally held to be 
about the only thing that deserves to be called 
science. 

For many ages, from Plato downward, the pre- 
vailing, not to say the only, doétrine among the 
learned was that the true way of investigation is 
not to observe particular faéts and by an induc- 
tion of them ascend to general principles, but to 
first find the general principles in the depths of 
reason, and then deduce from them particular 
facts. Until the time of Lord Bacon this was 
generally considered the scientific method, and as 
good as demonstrated. To hold any other view 
was contempt of court, and punished accordingly. 
But now the tables are completely turned. The 
Induétive Method is on the throne. Experiment 
and observation are everywhere triumphant, and 
the old ‘‘science’’ is relegated to attics and curi- 
osity shops and the smoky dens of sundry German 
metaphysicians. 

Immemorially, and until quite recent times, 
all classes held Astrology to be a true science— 


Tempted to Unbelief. pa 


178 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


among these such men as Roger Bacon, Tycho 
Brahe, and the great father of the Induétive Phi- 
losophy himself. So unanimous and authorita- 
tive was the deliverance of scholars on the sub- 
ject, that for ages skeptics scarcely ‘‘ muttered or 
peeped’’ dissent. But to-day Astrology is the 
property of fools and prestidigitators. 

For ages also scientists upheld Alchemy as 
being not only an art but also a science. Rea- 
soning from assumed general principles, after the 
Deduétive Method then in vogue, they not only 
proved the possibility of changing base metals 
into the precious, and of compounding a universal 
Solvent and Remedy, but also laid down in a 
system the principles on which such splendid re- 
sults might be reached; and these principles were 
confidently reckoned so much science. Learning 
was about as positive and unchallenged in favor 
of Alchemy as it was in favor of its twin-sister 
Astrology. Who believes in Alchemy to-day— 
even though Panaceas and El Dorados and Phi- 
losopher’s Stones without number are advertised 
in every newspaper and hawked with brazen lung 
and cheek on all the country side? 

That the earth is the centre of the celestial 
motions and of a complex system of spheres car- 
tying around it all the other heavenly bodies was 
very good science for a time, and that a very long 


7m 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 179 


one—some fourteen centuries. During this great 
period astronomers were of one mind. Ptolemy 
had settled ‘‘the order of the heavens,’ and it 
was taught in all the schools as unquestion- 
able science, and that of the sublimest sort. 
Now the Ptolemaic System has not a single de 
fender. It is a curiosity—nothing more, scarcely 
that. 

In Meteorology, from the days of Aristotle 
down to those of Torricelli and Pascal, the scien- 
tific world taught that ‘‘Nature abhors a vac- 
uum;’’ and this was generally accepted as a sci- 
entific explanation of the rise of water in a pump. 
For a hundred years Chemists, including such 
men as Priestly and Boerhaave, were agreed on 
phlogiston as the principle of combustion; also for 
a long time, and in the name of Lavoisier and all 
Europe, taught that oxygen was the only acidify- 
ing principle. The Corpuscular Theory of light, 


rooting itself in the glory of Newton, was fashion- 


able science until within the memory of men now 
living, but is now almost completely supplanted 
by the Undulatory Theory: while light, heat, 
electricity, magnetism, and even gravity, which 
used to be reckoned distinét principles, are now 
widely reckoned only different and mutually con- 
vertible forms of the same thing, vzz., motion. 
From the beginning of Geology down—through 


ie TEMPTED TO UNBELIEE. 


Vulcans and Neptunes, cataclysms and uniformi- 
tarianisms, astronomic abysms of time and Mane- 
tho’s contemporaneous dynasties reproduced in 
stone—down to the present time, some fifty chap- 
ters of good rousing science, fit for text-books and 
colleges, have had to be rewritten; and even these 
we must not take as a finality, if we are to credit 
the President of the British Association of Sci- 
ence, who, taking his stand perhaps on the deep- 
sea dredgings of the Challenger and Spencer’s 
"‘ logical Geology ’’ and Darwin’s ‘‘Incomplete- 
ness of the Geologic Record,’’ officially informs 
us that it is the prevailing feeling among Geolo- 
gists that ‘‘the whole foundation of ‘Theoretic 
Geology must be reconstru¢ted.’’ ‘This, however, 
is not quite so startling and discouraging as the 
assertion of Heeckel that all of the sciences ‘‘ rest 
on unverified hypotheses.”’ 

For further examples of what an eminent pro- 
fessor of Chemistry calls the ‘‘shifting phases of 
science,’’ see such books as Whewell’s History of 
the Indu€tive Sciences. And to the formidable 
array add, if you please, the successive waves of 
Metaphysical Science that have so swiftly chased 
and obliterated each other on the sands of Ger- 
many, that one lifts his eyebrows and shrugs his 
shoulders at the very names of Fichte, Schelling, 
Hegel, Semler, Strauss, etc. 


SAMPLE SCIENCE, 181 


And what is the lesson? ‘That there is noth- 
ing reliable in science? By no means—but that 
even scholars are so free and easy and precipitate 
in applying that venerable name that Religion 
has no need to be alarmed and to hurry up its 
reconciliations and accommodations when assured 
that Science is deciding against her. It seems 
that before now Science has made a good many 
erroneous decisions. And should it ever become 
hardy enough to decide, as with one voice, that 
Moses and Christ are unscientific, and even that 
eternal Matter is the sole mother of everything, 
from a weed to a world, from a mote to a man, 
we who know history have good reason to believe 
that even this decision will all be taken back 
again in course of time in favor of that older sci- 
ence which says, ‘‘In the beginning God created 
the heavens and the earth.”’ 

When will men have done with the profanity 
of calling their venturesome speculations and 
hasty guesses and unverified hypotheses by the 
name of science? Wet them keep to the name 
that belongs to them. ‘This is Border Land. 
Every true science is like a nebulous star—with 
a bright central nucleus that shades away into a 
border-land where darkness and light contend for 
the mastery. ‘The bright nucleus of assured truth 
is always growing; but the vague and shadowy 


182 TEMPTED ‘TQ UNBELIEF. 


outskirts always remain: and we are not allowed 
even to hope for the time when our star will 
cease to be nebulous. Astronomers, chemists, 
and all other scientists will ever find a misty re- 
gion girding them on all sides, into which the 
sight passes but doubtfully. While they are try- 
ing with aching eyes to make something out of 
the shadows and ghosts of shadows that play 
hide-and-seek in the distance, let them not so 
far forget themselves as to call those phantoms 
science. 

Though we are never to see a perfected sci- 
ence, we do see sciences going on ¢oward perfec- 
tion. And experience assures us that as fast as 
they advance they will advance in accord with 
the Bible. In their crude state they are like the 
spokes of a broken wheel, which the wheelwright 
is setting himself to repair. Many of the spokes 
are broken off at different lengths, and somewhat 
strained out of their proper direction; yet there is 
a general convergence on the hub. But should 
the repairs proceed, and radius after radius be 
eked out to its proper length and put in position 
till all is done—then we should have the sciences, 
really such, not only generally pointing at, but 
visibly united in, the Bible. ‘This is what we are 
surely moving toward. Meanwhile, some of us 
are getting a little impatient. We wish the sci- 


SAMPLE SCIENCE. 183 


ences would hurry up their repairs. We want to 
see more of the bright but broken and displaced 
rays that are streaming from all quarters toward 
our sun visibly completed through their whole 
length, and united in that great Luminary— 
God’s written Revelation. — 


184 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


XI. 


GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? 


TIME was, and that not very far back, when 
the current feeling among Christians was that 
there is no such thing as an honest atheism or 
even infidelity. It is not only hollow, but the 
hollowness is so complete as to leave nothing but 
a mere skin of profession. But latterly this view 
has sensibly retreated. Not only is the genuine- 
ness of the grosser forms of unbelief generally al- 
lowed, but a disposition is widely shown to speak 
of them, and especially of the more eminent and 
scholarly unbelievers, in so mild and apologetic a 
tone as to push on us the inquiry, ‘‘Is it indeed 
little or nothing of an offence for men in these 
times and lands to be without a Christ and even 
without a God ?”’ 

Look atthem. They are scientists—metaphy- 
sicians, chemists, geologists, astronomers, bota- 
nists, biologists. Some of them, confessedly, 
have large natural powers, and large experience 
and repute as investigators or teachers within 
their respective fields. ‘They are well supplied 
with libraries and all outward appliances of in- 


GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? 185 


vestigation, and are seen daily going through the 
common forms and motions of trained minds and 
of a faithful use of the best modern methods of 
inquiry. In addition, they live in the very cen- 
tre of Christian faith and information, and indeed 
have from childhood been in daily contaét with 
Christian facts, principles, and arguments. And 
yet they are materialists, deists, and even athe- 
ists—failing to reach the most elementary points 
of religious knowledge. They know neither rev- 
elation nor God; and freely declare themselves to 
that effeét in le¢tures and journals and books. 
Some of these unbelievers are professional stu- 
dents of moral and religious subjects, industri- 
ously working all the formalities and technicali- 
ties of learning, and devoting their whole time to 
what they call study of the theory and literature 
of religion; and yet they are found in the last and 
darkest depths of godless speculation. 

What do Christians say of these men? Some- 
times very mild things: ‘‘We are sorry for the 
result to which this author has come; but there 
can be but one opinion as to his candor, and the 
scientific singleness of mind and hearty love of 
truth displayed in the volume.’’ So the critical 
_ journals pronounce, and in the spirit of such a 
verdi&t they go on to bespeak for these unbeliev- 
ers, as le¢turers and authors, a large public atten- 


Tempted to Unbelief. 24 


186 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


tion and welcome. By their mild words and 
liberal encomiums they ere¢t, so to speak, lofty 
platforms for them, from which they may com- 
mand the sight and ears of men. And it is just 
possible that when these fair-minded and very 
distinguished gentlemen have come to occupy the 
real platforms so kindly, though indire€tly, pro- 
vided for them by their Christian admirers, these 
admirers take the platform with them, nobly in- 
troduce them, and afterward compliment them 
with breakfasts and receptions. When called to 
account for this, they justify themselves partly on 
the ground of the literary and scientific eminence 
of their protégés, and partly on the ground of 
their attitude as sincere and fearless inquirers after 
truth—men who have painfully done their best in 
the search, and yet without success, and so are 
agnostics as to the Bible and God, and even the 
reality of moral distinétions! Of course, then, 
we must call them unfortunates, victims of cir- 
cumstances or constitution, men to be pitied ra- 
ther than blamed. 

I do not feel permitted to take this view of the 
case, charitable and amiable as it seems. ‘The 
chief trouble is that it is quite too amiable for the 
Bible. According to this Book no one can miss 
the fundamental verities of religion without su- 
preme guilt. Men are commanded to believe 


GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? 187 


them under the severest penalties. The penalties 
could not be greater. In which of the Testa- 
ments do we find that a man may be without God 
and yet be blameless? When the Israelites fell 
away from Jehovah into idolatry, were they ever 
treated simply as objects of pity? ‘The Lord re- 
buked them and scourged them as if they had 
committed an enormity. Where is the prophet 
or apostle that speaks of an unbeliever in God or 
Christ in the vein in which some Christian re- 
views have spoken of Mill? Even the heathen 
are held to be without excuse for not knowing the 
Creator of heaven and earth. It is the “fool” 
that says in his heart, ‘‘ There is no God.’” We 
are told again and again that a true seeking after 
God is sure to find him. ‘‘If any man will do 
His will, he shall know of the doétrine, whether 
it be of God, or whether I speak of myself; a 
conscientious liver and doer according to his light 
is sure to become a disciple of Christ. This is 
the way the Bible speaks. Not one of these men 
without faith in God and his Son has yet seen 
the time when he could not reasonably be sum- 
moned to repent and believe the Gospel imme- 
diately. The repentance itself would bring him 
faith. He never would have come into this faith- 
less state if he had treated himself and the truth 
fairly; and he now continues in it, not by any 


188 LEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


invincible necessity—unless indeed he has been 
judicially given over to a reprobate mind to be- 
lieve a lie—but from some gross moral remissness 
for which he may righteously be held to severe 
account. Beyond all queens this is the Bible 
way of viewing things. 

And it is also the way of a reasonable Deism. 
Whether there is a God from whom we came and 
to whom we owe reverence, love, worship, ser- 
vice—is it possible that a man honestly and pa- 
tiently struggling for light is left helplessly in the 
dark about such a matter as this? Whether we 
have a written revelation from heaven on the 
basis of which only we can be sanétified and 
saved—is it possible that God leaves any honest 
soul to do its painful best over such a matter as 
this and yet do it in vain? I must say, No. I 
cannot reconcile it with my sense of what would 
be kind or just or wise in the Supreme Being. 
So whenever I see an atheist or an infidel, what- 
ever show of candor and fair research he may 
make, I say to myself, Something is wrong about 
the interior of this man; the fair appearance is 
deceptive; if his whole history were laid open to 
view, as by the scalpel of yon illustrious anato- 
mist, it would be found that he has sadly and 
criminally mismanaged himself in his relations to 
the truth; and if he ever becomes a believer he 


GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? 189 


will see and confess as much, as hundreds before 
him have done, and as recovered unbelievers are 
very apt to do. 

How well I remember such a confession once 
made to myself. A young man of uncommon 
brightness of mind, in conneétion with unbe- 
lieving company and reading, lapsed through infi- 
delity into atheism. I sought to recover him in 
many a conversation. He expressed the utmost 
confidence in his position. He had all the air of 
a most profound and ingenuous unbelief; had 
sought to know the truth, had desired it above all 
things, had thought and read to the best of his 
faculty and opportunity, and, as the result, felt 
compelled to withhold faith from Jesus and from 
God. A great trouble came on him. He was 
set face to face with death. Still no change in 
his bearing. The end drew nigh. The same 
confident composure of a mind that has done its 
best to know, and has failed. I almost despaired 
of him. But one day I found a great change. I 
could see it in his face before I heard it in his 
words. ‘The whole struéture of his unbelief had 
suddenly fallen to pieces, as if a house of cards, 
at the first stroke of a genuine repentance. And 
then he confessed to me how hollow had been his 
confidence, his so-called investigations, and even 
his seeming unbounded ingenuousness. He had 


190 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


overstated himself, his seeking did not deserve the 
name, he felt culpable in view of the whole pro- 
cess by which he became and so long remained an 
unbeliever. 

Such a confession almost always follows such 
a recovery. And were there no other light on 
the case of yon unbelievers—who seem to have 
exhausted all the attitudes and motions of a fair 
religious inquiry, and all to no purpose—than is 
shown by such examples, I should feel sure that 
they are very like some collegian we have known, 
and of whom we know that he has bent over the 
college books for four years, appeared regularly at 
recitations and examinations, and is now through 
with his curriculum, but without anything that 
deserves to be called an education. Is he an in- 
capable? By no means, not even a dullard. 
Well then, I know that he must have been culpa- 
bly wanting to himself; knew it before. taking 
counsel of his instruétors, and learning of them 
how sluggishly and carelessly and superficially he 
has dealt with his studies. 

Well, if there is blameworthiness of a very 
grave sort about all these unbelieving men, in 
what does it lie? My view is this. In common 
with all other natural men they secretly disrel- 
ished essential religion itself; they neglected to 
carefully praétise the truth as far as known; they 


GUILTY OR WOT GUILTY? Ig! 


opened their ears freely to unbelieving specula- 
tions without really investigating any; even their 
seeming investigation of heism and Scripture 
was only a seeming. Names and forms of inquiry 
they had in abundance, but really they were only 
names and forms. ‘They never went on the tracks 
of truth as the hunter does on the tracks of his 
game. They have never sought for religious wis- 
dom as for silver, and dug for it as for hid treas- 
ures. Their learned names, their logical formu- 
las, their scientific and philosophical moulds of 
thought never included a real, hearty seeking 
after truth. One is reminded of a suit of armor, 
each part fastened to its proper place: at a dis- 
tance one might think he saw a knight ready for 
battle; but, on coming up, a single rap shows that 
there is no man within, much less the renowned 
Cid. Their investigation was a mere simula- 
crum. It did not deserve the name, though no 
doubt it plentifully got it, especially from the 
men themselves. I would not care to say that 
they never had any jets of honest effort after the 
truth: few indeed but have some intermittent im- 
pulses in right diretions. But, as to anything 
like patient continuance in well-doing, they never 
had it. Not a month, not a week, very likely 
not a day or even hour had they conscientiously 
devoted to solid, prayerful inquiry. ‘The whole 


192 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


matter was slurred over. ‘They read, heard, talked, 
and, to some extent and after a sort, inquired 
around the subject; they received impulses, floated 
on currents, perhaps drifted so as to touch the 
circumference of the Evidences at some points— 
tangents, not secants—but they never persever- 
ingly laid themselves out to make and enter the 
mouth of that harbor. 

So their minds had no anchorage. They were 
just in the position to be blown hither and thither 
by every wind of doétrine. And they allowed 
themselves to be blown upon freely from all points 
of the compass. Perhaps they zvited all the 
winds. Led by that secret repugnance to religion 
of which I have spoken, they set their ears wide 
open to everything obje¢tors had to say. They 
set their eyes wide open to all that cavillers and 
adversaries chose to print. Under the plea that 
it was but fair to hear both sides, and the assump- 
tion that such vague and casual dealings with the 
side of faith as no one can well fail of in a Chris- 
tian land are enough for it, they made themselves 
thoroughfares for all sorts of unbelieving notions 
and speculations. ‘That easiest thing in the world 
for anybody to do, the raising of objections on 
whatever subje&, they took in the whole unbe- 
lieving world to assist them in doing. They heard 
everything, and really examined nothing. They 


GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY? 193 


were always hearing what the enemy had to say, 
with a natural bias in his favor. 

The consequence could have been foreseen 
from across the world. ’‘I‘he smallest acquaint- 
ance with human nature could have predicted an 
unsettled mind, a mind full of suspicions and jeal- 
ousies of the truth, full of difficulties, doubts, an- 
tagonisms; and at last full of bitter and aggressive 
infidelities and atheisms. In faét, it is a case of 
much bad company. Is a man known by the 
company he keeps? Does one insensibly take 
character from his habitual surroundings, unless 
he is contending against them? ‘These men are 
not contending against the unbelieving notions 
with which they have peopled themselves, but 
the reverse. What else could be expeéted than 
that they should gradually become like their 
favorite companions? Do we wonder if a man 
becomes modified by the food he eats, the air he 
breathes, the dress he daily puts himself in, the 
class of people he confines himself to? Bad sur- 
roundings will unsettle good health, good man- 
ners, good grammar, and even good morals; 
especially in the earlier part of life and when 
these things have but ets root: why not good 
Opinions as well ? 

So, for one, I am not surprised that these men 
are unbelievers. .I should be surprised if they 


Tempted to Unbelief. 25 


194 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


were not. Ifa man opens all the gates of his field 
into a hunting park, he may be sure that the 
foxes, wild boars, and other destructive animals 
which belong in the park, to say nothing of 
trampling hounds and hunters, will lay his field 
waste and make a harvest impossible ! 

Beyond all question, the chief foe to Christian- 
ity in our time is intellectual unbelief. And the 
Christian minister, as he goes forth to his work, 
has great occasion to bear well in mind the sources 
of this unbelief, and its gravely criminal charac- 
ter—even when called scientific—and govern him- 
self accordingly in the assaults he is to make and 
sustain. 


FLARDEYUHE PORTER. 195 


XII. 


PARLEY THE PORTER. 


CAUTION is needed in using all our senses. 
Can one carelessly taste anything that offers itself? 
He would die of poison. Can one carelessly feel 
or smell everything that offers itself? He would 
grasp a nettle or an asp; would fill his nostrils 
with disgust and disease. So of the senses of 
sight and hearing. Unless we take heed what we 
hear and see, we shall soon cease to hear and see 
at all. The thunder will deafen and the light- 
ning will blind us. 

On this point there is no disagreement among 
sensible men. And, if the men are good as well 
as sensible, they are especially wont to recognize 
the need of caution in using the two great senses 
of stght and hearing. 'To a man, they dislike to 
see their children listening with free ear to the 
oaths and ribaldry of some low fellow to whom 
nothing is sacred. ‘Toa man, they refuse to have 
their children look in upon many scenes of gross 
vice. It would distress them to discover that the 
pride and hope of their homes are either hearing 
or reading daily lessons of falsehood, dishonesty, 


196 LEMPTED LO UNBELIES. 


disobedience—lending patient attention to shrewd 
encomiums on such things as selfishness, revenge, 
sensuality, and obscenity. "The child who should 
stop his ears and run from those who are trying to 
teach him the manliness of idleness, insubordi- 
nation, drunkenness, and murder would receive 
the instant approbation of all in the community 
whose approbation is worth having. Only the 
vilest or the silliest would claim that the fugitive 
ought to remain and hear both sides, that he is 
unfair, that he cannot know that the things rec- 
ommended are bad till he has heard all that may 
be said in defence of them. And every respecta- 
ble person knows of something against which he 
is disposed to shut his own eyes and ears as closely 
as he would those of his child. If fiends disguised 
as men set to advocating to his face a wholesale 
casting off of the restraints of ordinary morality 
and decency, and unbounded license of villainy 
and debauchery, he instin¢tively refuses to listen 
to such abominable communications. In vain do 
they insist loudly on ‘‘impartiality,’’? and the in- 
justice of being condemned without a full hear- 
ing; a voice in his heart tells him that such things 
are simply intolerable, and to be fled from as men 
are wont to flee from the neighborhood of reeking 
~ cesspools. | 

Who says all this better than the great 


PARLEY THE PORTER. 197 


Dreamer? Mansoul is surrounded by enemies. 
All its five gates are assailed by day and by night; 
but especially Ear-Gate and Eye-Gate. See how 
around these sweep and roar the great tides of 
stratagem and battle; how warrior doétrines and 
prattices—now disguised with the king’s uniform 
and white banners of friendship, and now openly 
charging with defiant trumpets and thrusting 
spears—seek entrance! The garrison must be on 
the alert. They must have eyes sharp as needles 
for all sorts of deceptions. ‘They must spy out 
from observatories, swarm on battlements, shoot 
from the lancet windows of flanking towers, and 
look well to bolt and bar. Else the smoke of 
Mansoul goes up to heaven. 

Bunyan was right—right as the Ten Com- 
mandments, and the law of self-preservation, and 
the famous prayer that says, ‘‘Lead us not into 
temptation.’? People must take heed what they 
hear and read. We cannot attend to everything, 
if we wish. Some things spoken and written are 
too trifling to deserve notice from persons whose 
day is so brief as ours. Shall you and I, who 
were born yesterday and will die to-morrow, 
spend our time in chasing inconsequential atoms? 
Let them go, while we look at the great-orbed 
worlds that come wheeling so grandly near us 
and demanding our attention with the voices of 


198 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF 


kings. But then all great things are neither true, 
nor good, nor useful. Even as there are monsters 
among the animals, and Gehennas of fire among 
the worlds, so among the written and spoken doc- 
trines that go abroad, many are monsters of false- 
hood and destrué€tiveness. We can no more go 
among them without care than we could among 
dissolved menageries. For a purpose we do some- 
times adventure ourselves among wild beasts, but 
we do it with great precautions, and perhaps after 
having cased ourselves in steel. For a purpose 
we do sometimes adventure ourselves into a mala- 
rious atmosphere, but we do it with all possible 
safeguards—perhaps with a medicated sponge over 
the mouth. And, doubtless, for a purpose, and 
with due care, some may and should go in freely 
among gross opinions and practices. Somebody 
must thoroughly know, expose, and fight such 
things. Let the champions fulfil their destiny. 
But as to most people, they have no vocation for 
this sort of work, and the less they have to do 
with it the better. Such is the teaching of expe- 
rience; of philosophy, as well. Much less do these 
warrant people at large in a vague and purpose- 
less hearing or reading of all sorts of do¢trines and 
notions. ‘Ihe youth accustomed to roam about 
and listen without restraint to everything, good, 
bad, and indifferent, which men may choose to 


PARLEY THE PORTER. 199 


say to him, seldom fails of being ruined. ‘The 
adult who suffers himself to be persuaded to keep 
his ear carelessly open to vile or false teachings, 
commonly ends with accepting them, or at least 
with not rejecting them. Making it his practice 
to hear everything, he is found at last without a 
fixed belief in anything. It is an old story—old 
as the first mother of Scripture. A too-open ear 
slew her. ' She would listen to what the serpent 
had to say against God. She would entertain the 
arguments which the fiend with subtle voice mar- 
shalled against the justice and truth of her Maker. 
And so the Fall! So armies of disasters trooping 
in on the world through that ancient unkept Ear- 
Gate. 

I have mainly in my thought the way in which 
many treat infidel and atheistic speculations, and 
even such as directly assail the last foundations of 
right and wrong. Do they not freely, though 
without anything that deserves to be called inves- 
tigation, read unbelieving books and journals, and 
perhaps allow their children to do the same? Do 
they not go to hear unbelieving leéturers? and at 
street corners, stores, blacksmith shops, and what- 
ever modern substitute for the ancient agora, allow 
themselves to be swept in upon by all the winds 
of cavil and objection? People who incautiously 
sit in draughts must be expected to take colds, not 


200 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


to say deaths, no matter how vigorous their health 
and sound their constitutions, and much matter if 
they are invalids; such carelessness will be the 
death of weaklings. And when I find certain old 
sayings well expressing these lessons of experi- 
ence, I am not going to think any the worse of 
them because they happen to be some thousands 
of years old and to be found in the Bible. “Evil 
communications corrupt good manners.’’ ‘‘ Cease, 
my son, to hear the instruction that causeth to 
err from the words of knowledge.’’ ‘‘’Take heed 
what ye hear.’? ‘‘A companion of fools shall be 
destroyed;’’ and I do not imagine it to make much 
difference whether the ‘‘ fools’’ be of the specula- 
tive sort or the practical. Living in bad air will 
damage any constitution. Hearing and reading 
everything without thoroughly examining any- 
thing, must, from the very nature of the human 
mind, confuse and unsettle it. A common thor- 
oughfare must be expected to be dusty and dim. 
A constant trampling and outcry along it of dis- 
orderly herds of cattle cannot but go to drown 
nobler voices. It is awfully inconsistent for a 
man to pray, ‘‘ ead us not into temptation,’’ and 
then set Ear-Gate and Eye-Gate wide open to all 
assailants. Shall the farmer have neither fences 
nor police? ‘Then he soon will have nothing 
else; no corn, no wine, no oil—no “ving. 


RARDLEL ILA E PORTER: 201 


Does one say, ‘‘ You cannot properly reject a 
doétrine till you have personally heard what its 
friends have to say in its favor’’ ?' 

I might deny this. I may see clearly that 
entertaining the pleas of unbelief will have an 
unfavorable effect on my character; may see it 
more or less from experience of my own, as well 
as from observation of the experience of others. 
Also, I may see a surer, easier, and altogether 
safer way of testing unbelief than that of listening 
indefinitely to such men as Paine and Voltaire, 
viz., the experimental way suggested in the Scrip- 
tures, something like which seems indispensable 
to the great bulk of mankind with their narrow 
intellectual opportunities. Or, I may see clearly 
that if a hearing must be given, it had better be 
given by some other persons more competent than 
myself, and on the whole more favorably circum- 
stanced for judging corre¢tly; as when a Legisla- 
ture appoints a committee of its ablest to consider 
and report upon a proposed bill. 

But, granting that it is necessary for me to give 
a personal hearing to what unbelief has to say for 
itself, does it follow that this hearing must be pro- 
longed indefinitely? Must the time never come 
when I shall be warranted in shutting my door on 
the assailants of religion, and saying, ‘‘I have 
had enough of this. You must not ask me for 


Tempted to Unbelief. 26 


202 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


any further entertainment of your notions. I can- 
not afford to keep open house any longer—espe- 
cially without precautions, as I have been doing. 
For, my vague and careless reading and hearing, 
without anything of the earnest probing of an 
investigator, has been nothing more than a per- 
mission of free entry into my mind at all hours of 
the day and night to whatever vagabond specula- 
tions may be abroad. What valuable house could 
long stand such a liberal treatment of tramps! 
It would be stripped of everything valuable. Not 
unlikely the very building itself would disappear 
in flame and smoke, as did the barn whose latch- 
string I left out for the accommodation of all 
chance wayfarers. What better fate has the house 
within me to look for if I leave its latchstring out 
in a region that abounds with rogues and incen- 
diaries in the form of opinions and _ specula- 
tions ?”’ 

Men can be found to recommend lying and 
stealing, and even worse things. And some of 
these strange people are very ingenious. ‘They 
are capital jugglers in thought and speech, such 
first-rate painters of ugliness that it seems beauty 
itself to a careless observer. And they say, ‘‘ Be 
fair. Give our side a full hearing. And, as you 
can never know before examination but that our 
latest is our best and quite conclusive, continue 


MARLEY THE PORTER, 203 


to hear as long as you live.’? What say we to 
such an appeal? Do we straightway admit its 
justice? Never. We are not so simple. We 
know it would be the ruin of our families, if not 
of ourselves, to open ears indefinitely to subtle 
pleas for dishonesty and sensuality. If ever we 
really come to doubt whether such things are the 
abominations they are said to be, and nothing will 
satisfy our sense of even-handed justice but a per- 
sonal hearing of what can be said in their favor, 
we will give a sufficient hearing under all possi- 
ble precautions, azd then have done. ‘This is our 
utmost. No principle of justice known to men 
requires us to treat a suspected enemy as if he 
were a proved friend; and to keep on doing it for 
a thousand years, or even for threescore and ten. 
The law of self-preservation deserves some respeét. 
He who in this latitude keeps his door open from 
January to January, through the whole round 
year, will be likely to have tempests for guests. 
‘’Guests,”’ do I say? The right to enter at’all 
hours and for a lifetime does not differ sensibly 
from ownership. 

A pedler approaches your gate. As you look 
at him through the blind, you see that his appear- 
ance is far from prepossessing. Is not this the 
man of whom you have been hearing so much of 
late—so much 2//? ‘The air is full of rumors to 


204 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


the effect that his wares are worthless, even infec- 
tious; and some people of great consideration go 
so far as to say that the infection is a pestilence. 
This has been the formal report of several com- 
mittees of most able and reliable physicians, who, 
for the sake of the public, have been at the trou- 
ble and risk to turn over the man’s whole stock in 
trade, piece by piece, and apply the best known 
tests. Indeed, have you not personally known 
some who have dealt with him, and who from 
that time seemed to pine away as if by slow poi- 
son ? 

As you think of this you seem to perceive a 
subtile something in the air stealing in upon you 
through your channel of observation and all crev- 
ices of doors and windows. Is it oxygen? Is it 
some delightful perfume? You do not need to 
ask long. With every step of the advancing 
stranger the odor strengthens; and now, as he 
stands knocking, such a wave of impurity comes 
in upon you as almost upsets you. Your vitality 
is consciously abating, your sight grows dim, 
your lungs begin to labor. 

With a caution to your servant, you turn an 
extra bolt on your door. You hie to some upper 
window, well to the windward, and, with some 
misgivings at doing even so much, call out to the | 
man, | 


PARLEY THE PORTER. 205 


‘‘ What do you want?’ 

‘‘T have some valuable goods which I would 
like to show you.”’ 

‘‘T have no occasion for them.”’’ 

“Still, allow me to show them. ‘They are 
well worth seeing; as fine specimens of manufac- 
ture as you ever saw, and great bargains. If, on 
seeing, you do not want them, very well, no harm 
is done. I shall charge you nothing for the 
showing. I take pleasure in it.”’ 

FeStill) cannot admit you. Thie fact" is, ‘you 
are charged on very high authority with carrying 
about wares infected with the plague. I strongly 
suspect that your goods are bads. If you have 
anything to say against this charge, say it briefly. 
I do not consider it exa¢tly safe for me, in my 
weak state of health and predisposition to the dis- 
ease you are said to carry about with you, to par- 
ley with you even at this distance. So speak up, 
man, and make short work of it. I have no time 
to lose on such unpromising cases as yours. Why 
should I not say, Begone? why not set my dogs 
on you? why not call in the police and have you 
driven from the premises ?”’ 

Who would blame you for such downright 
proceedings? Certainly, no man who believes in 
quarantine-grounds in time of pestilence, light- 
houses on dangerous coasts, pickets and fortifica- 


206 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


tions in time of war; in short, that yon old-fash- 
ioned thing which men call prudence is righteous, 
useful, and necessary. Even should you refuse 
audience altogether to the unpromising vagabond 
at your door, you would Bice be thought to 
aét harshly. 

But should you admit him to your parlors and 
nursery, and to unlimited conference and display 
of his perilous wares, the whole neighborhood 
would exclaim against your amazing folly. They 
would declare you unfit to have the care of your- 
self, much less of your family. They would put 
a conservator over you. What are you but a pub- 
lic peril? What promise you but another Massa- 
cre of the Innocents ? 

If I were living in the Middle Ages, I would 
live in a castle. ‘That is the sort of house for 
such times. Have I not many powerful and wide- 
awake enemies for neighbors? Are not the for- 
ests full of outlaws? Are not armed adventurers 
riding about the country in every direction in 
search of battle and spoil? So up with the mas- 
sive keep. Raise around it, wide and high, the 
rocky walls and towers. Set up the gates, mighty 
with timbers of oak and plates of iron, thunder- 
ing as they close, ‘‘We forbid thee.’” Mark out 
the fosse, and dig it deep and broad, and, if pos- 
sible, fill it with water, even if in order to do it 


PARLEY THE PORTER. 207 


we have to turn the course of the Euphrates. 
And now set the garrison in their places, the 
watchmen in their watch-towers, the bowmen and 
slingers at battlement and barbacan, at each bolted 
and barred gate a keeper whose name is zo¢ Par- 
ley the porter. Let your orders be clear and de- 
cisive. Say, ‘‘See to it that every approach is 
watched. Challenge all comers. In such times 
as these an unkept gate means destruétion. 
Challenge all comers !”” 

Well, now that I think of it, we do live in the 
Middle Ages. ‘The times are disturbed. Free 
lances are riding in every direction under the 
name of free-thinkers. Our neighbors are no bet- 
ter than they should be; but the barons of unbe- 
lief and misbelief are pricking up and down, on 
their hobbies of speculation, to capture or kill as 
many vassals as possible. Under these circum- 
stances a prudent man will not live on an open 
common, if he can do better. And he caz do 
better. Yonder is an eminence. ‘There let him 
build a stronghold. And when he has built it, 
let him keep it like a man of war. See to Ear- 
Gate and Eye-Gate especially. Stop all sus- 
pected persons afar off. Do not let them in to 
plead their cause. If you do, you will rue it: 
good-by to goods and chattels; good-by to the 
castle itself; nay, good-by to yourself. You have 


208 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


become a vassal of Misbelief, and your health 
and life, at the hands of this ruthless baron and 
his savage over-lord Diabolus, are little better 
than gone already. And all because you did not 
mind the Saviour’s caution, ‘‘ Take heed what 
ye hear.”’ 


Have you raiment white as snow? 
Have a care where’er you go, 

Or that snowy raiment soon 

Will not brook the light of noon. 


Have you tools like mirrors bright? 
Have a care lest breath of night, 
Rainy day, or salt-air must, 

Cloud those mirrors into rust. 


Have you plants right choice and rare? 
To these plants give daily care; 

Woo the sun, repel the frost, 

Water give, or they are lost. 


Have you gold and silver store? 
Have a care, or soon no more 
Will your coins consent to stay 
Where all hands can filch away. 


Have you richer store of health? 
Have a care, for this is wealth; 
Damps by night and heats by day 
Watch to steal your life away. 


Have you home and troops of friends? 
Will you keep them? That depends 
On what watch and ward you keep 
O’er the sparks from hearth and lip. 


PARLE YeLHE PORTER, 209 


Have you fortress great and strong ? 
Watch the foes that round it throng! 
Else your gates and towers will flame 
With their glory and your shame. 


Have you virtue? Such rich gem 
Never blazed on diadem— 

You must shield it night and day 
By the buckler WATCH AND PRAY. 


All you have of good and grand 
You must save with eye and hand; 
As is saved the goodly ship 

On a strange and stormy deep. 


Tempted to Unbelief. 2] 


210 TEMPTED. TO UNBELIEF. 


GEE 
WHAT DO THEY MEAN ? 


I WENT into a bookstore. Having some curi- 
osity to know what sort of books that particular 
establishment offered for sale, I looked the stock 
carefully over. It consisted almost exclusively of 
books designed or fitted to promote unbelief in 
God and the Scriptures. I was not surprised, for 
I knew that the bookseller was an outspoken 
unbeliever. 

I passed into another establishment. It was 
large, handsomely furnished, indeed almost pala- 
tial in size and appointments. Its shelves were 
loaded with thousands on thousands of beautifully 
made and attraétively displayed volumes. On 
looking them over, I found very many of them to 
be in the interest of unbelief; some of them after 
a very subtle and concealed fashion, but many 
without any concealment whatever. Not a few 
bore the imprint of the firm. Some of the most 
specious and dangerous of all the modern assaults 
on religion were included in the latter class. They 
were books which no careful Christian father 
would have in his house for any consideration. 
They were books which few Christian pastors could 


WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 211 


see circulating freely among their people without 
grief and alarm. And yet here they were; splen- 
didly advertised, and in course of being sent 
through all the arteries of trade with the immense 
push and commercial facilities of a great, veteran 
Christian corporation. Was I surprised? By no 
means. I had known the fact for years; and, in 
common with most of the reading public, could 
have direéted inquirers off-hand to the greatest 
publishers and distributers of infidel and atheistic 
writings on this continent. No, I was not sur- 
prised, only puzzled for the hundredth time to 
understand how Christian people could conscien- 
tiously lend themselves and their resources to do 
such work. 

I sat down on the outskirts of a city Bible 
Class. There were in it some scores of young 
men and women, evidently belonging to the more 
influential classes. The teacher, I soon found, 
was a man of fluency and shrewdness, and ambi- 
tious to shine as an acute and’ expert logician. 
He was Deacon A After listening an hour 
I went away sad. ‘The questions proposed, the 
answers given, the sort of discussion encouraged, 
and the whole style of dealing with Scripture 
went to make doubters and cavillers. I shall be 
surprised if that Bible Class does not graduate at 
no distant day many avowed infidels. 


212 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


I took up a religious newspaper. I call it 
such because it calls itself such, and is currently 
spoken of as such. My eye fell on a review of a 
new book whose whole drift, as I happened to 
know, was in the direction of unbelief. It was a 
very indulgent review. The praise buried the 
censure fathoms deep. ‘‘Such an able author; 
so careful, candid, fair-minded, judicial, and such 
an admirable style! ‘To be sure, exceptions must 
be taken to some things; but, on the whole, the 
book is well worth reading, and indeed is one 
which an intelligent man who wishes to keep 
abreast of his age can hardly afford to do with- 
out.’? Between you and me, that book was 
Heeckel’s. Was I surprised? By no means, for 
I had just been reading in another newspaper an 
article credited to this, which assailed the histori- 
cal character of the Pentateuch, and claimed that 
if Moses was not a myth he certainly came from 
an ape. But were not these oversights, or, at 
the most, those rare nods which even Jupiter must 
be expefted to make? Oh, no; this Jupiter has 
a habit of such nodding. He does it almost every 
week. Almost every week some article appears 
which opposes, openly or strategically, some funda- 
mental religious doctrine, or helps some unbeliev- 
ing book into favorable notice and circulation in 
thousands of families. Are the owners and edi- 


WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 213 


tors of this paper professed anti-religionists? On 
the contrary, they are professed Christians. Un- 
believers ! They resent the imputation. See how 
many eminently spiritual and evangelical articles 
by the first divines in the country grace their col- 
umns! ‘They only do as do Kitto’s Encyclopedia 
and the Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘They are men 
whose business it is to hold up a mirror to the 
times, who believe in giving even the devil his 
due, and who do ot believe in a Christianity that 
is behind the age and cannot stand a blow or two 
from the hammer of free discussion. And that 
very copy of their paper contained an appeal from 
them to Christian ministers to promote its circu- 
lation as likely to be of great service to them in 
their work ! ) ‘ 

I found myself in a Reading Room and Circu- 
lating Library. It was a sort of free lunch for 
the city youth. And I had some curiosity to 
know what sort of food the rising generation in 
that part of the city was having. SoI went about 
among the tables covered with periodicals and 
among the shelves loaded with books, with pry- 
ing eyes. And it did not take me long to dis- 
cover on both tables and shelves, among current 
periodicals and books, an amount of specious infi- 
delity that drove the blood from my cheek. Sand- 
wiched in among much that was excellent, some- 


214 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


times put forward as hypothesis and sometimes as 
proved science, sometimes approaching the city by 
mining and sometimes trying to take it by storm, 
here was printed unbelief to any extent in its most 
gross and yet most taking forms. Who put it 
there and kept it there? A Committee of Direc- 
tion, none of whom probably would be willing to 
be counted among the disciples of that Paine 
whose Age of Reason they had provided in many 
versions, from Tom’s own to Bob’s own, for the 
sons and daughters of the much-tempted and 
much-tempting Gotham; but most of whom, on 
the contrary, worshipped in evangelical congre- 
gations and were even members of churches. As 
Directors are apt to do, they had left their business 
to one or two of their number, and the one or two 
had been in favor of a ‘“‘liberal’’ policy. They 
thought religion could stand it. 

I strayed into a le€ture-room. I might as well 
add that the le€ture-room was a Christian san¢ctu- 
ary. It was the largest and most comfortable 
room in the village, and so it was being occupied 
for a series of popular entertainments. There had 
already been a Reading, a Concert, Tableaux, a 
Fair, and now there was to be a scientific lecture 
by aman of note. His coming had been loudly 
heralded. ‘The managers were enterprising men, 
and bound to succeed; so pyrotechnic advertising 


WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 215 


was not spared, and language was put on its met- 
tle to tell of the ‘‘celebrated orator and philoso- 
pher who had consented to appear among them.” 
It was a full house. A great many young men 
were there; new barks with all their fresh white 
sails flung jauntily abroad to catch whatever wind 
might chance to be blowing. Well, it was an 
unbelieving le¢ture from beginning to end. Had 
its drift been accepted by the fathers of that com- 
munity, the lecturer would have had no san€tuary 
to lecture in. His insinuations, his humor, his 
anecdotes, his speculations, his assumptions were 
in the interest of unbelief, were so many ‘‘flings” 
at the Scriptures and even their underlying The- 
ism. Yet the lecture was politic after a manner; 
and so, with its many graces of style and delivery, 
was well fitted to unsettle faith in inexperienced 
minds. 

Who were those Managers? Rank infidels 
and atheists? Donot think it. They were mostly 
church members; and not one of them but would 
have resented being called an opposer of religion. 
But perhaps they were as much surprised as your- 
self at what they heard, having relied on the 
man’s gentlemanly instinéts to keep him from 
abusing his position? I am afraid not. They 
knew the man. He was known all over the 
country, not only for his unbelief, but also for the 


216 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


outspokenness of it wherever he went. Indeed 
this fact, as I afterwards learned, had been pressed 
upon the attention of the Committee before their 
invitation was given. But no, they ‘‘ meant busi- 
ness.’? ‘They wanted somebody who would draw. 
They were bound to sell tickets. And they had 
too good an opinion of the Christian cause to fear 
its suffering from such a lecture. 

Once more, and worse. I went into a College, 
and talked with a Professor, and heard him talk 
to the students. I was surprised. I did not ex- 
pect such things from chat College. He was an 
‘Cadvanced thinker,’’ engaged in making ‘‘ad- 
vanced thinkers’’ of some hundreds of young men, 
gathered for the most part from Christian homes 
with a view to a Christian education. Any more 
of the instruétors who shared his views? Yes, 
two or three. And this was a Christian College 
in the intent of its founders, and the very endow- 
ments which supported these men had been gath- 
ered with much pains from the scanty stores of 
self-denying Christian people who wanted to do 
something for Christ. Who put and keep these 
men in their places? A Board of Trustees com- 
posed chiefly of Christian ministers. They do not 
like to be called illiberal and opposed to the prog- 
ress of science. Or, what is still more likely, 
they have left the business of their trust in the 


WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 217 


hands of one or two men, and, like the Direétors 
of so many moneyed institutions, have contented 
_ themselves with ratifying the suggestions of their 

proxies. Still, they are the same men who re- 
cently met in Council and installed as pastor of a 
parish a man who had not yet made up his mind 
in regard to the inspiration of the Scriptures and 
certain other Christian fundamentals. ‘They did 
it on the ground that he seemed a sincere inquirer 
after truth; and time, it was to be hoped, would 
ripen his inquiries into evangelical views. So 
they set him in his place as the religious teacher 
of a most important parish swarming with young 
men. What will come of it time will determine. 
But if a plentiful crop of weeds does not appear 
in that garden—no thanks to the Ecclesiastical 
Council. 

Is the Christian religion worth anything? 
Can people do about as well without a God as 
with? Every Christian, in virtue of the fa& that 
he is a Christian, holds that faith in God and his 
Son is an unspeakable blessing to the individual 
and to society, and its loss an unspeakable disas- 
ter. God himself, in the wide sweep of his sur- 
vey, does not see an evil so radical and compre- 
hensive, so fruitful of mischief and disorganiza- 
tion, as religious unbelief. It is as much worse 
than a pestilence as can well be imagined. What 


Tempted tc Unbelief. 28 


218 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


should we think of a man who should make it 
his business to send a plague all over the country, 
by post and express, albeit in nice and perfumed 
parcels? If a man sells alcoholic drinks in our 
town, we count him a public enemy, and, if pos- 
sible, hunt him, or at least his business, out of the 
community. If aman publishes lascivious books, 
the Police make a sortie upon him and suppress 
his books, not to say the man himself. When my 
son is dying of the profligacy or the drunkenness 
which these men have developed in him, it does 
not much appease my natural wrath to be told 
that they did it in the way of business, and that, 
if the temptation had been resisted, the boy would 
have been all the stronger and better for it: and 
should my son die of atheism at the hands of its 
propagators, I should be as little satisfied with 
such an excuse. 

You must know that I have one very true 
friend. Atleast he says he is such. He is almost 
always present at my weekly receptions, and his 
manner is very cordial. So far from making any 
secret of his regard for me, he takes pains to pub- 
lish it. I have known him take extraordinary 
pains for this purpose. He doubtless would feel 
outraged were I to deny him the name of friend. 

But, after all, I must say that he is a very sin- 
gular sort of friend. Many such would be the 


WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 219 


ruin of me. Would you think it? this friend of 
mine, like the bookseller of whom I have spoken, 
allows his house to be made the headquarters for 
all hints, insinuations, and gossip to my disad- 
vantage. Itis a very nice house; very attractive 
from its situation, architectural merit, elegant 
furniture, and good dinners. Anybody, by going 
to this delightful place, can have the latest slan- 
der against me served up in the most delightful 
style. And the owner is quite willing that any- 
body should come. In faét, he keeps open house. 
It is a place of great resort. 

But this is not the worst of it. My friend not 
only allows his house to be used to my disadvan- 
tage, but, like the bookseller and others of whom 
we have spoken, he actually sets himself to give 
as much currency to the attacks on me as possi- 
ble. He has business connections with all parts 
of the country, his agents are coming and going 
everywhere, and wherever they go they are di- 
rected to call attention to the stories against me 
with a flourish of trumpets, to pique the curiosity 
of the public in regard to them to the utmost, and 
to see that they are put in their most specious 
forms within the ears of the greatest possible 
number. ‘To be sure, it is all done in the way of 
business, and I am told that a good consideration 
is taken for what is given. How this helps the 


220 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF. 


matter is not very plain to me. It is, however, 
to my ‘‘friend;’’ and I am told further that, in 
his view, he is doing me a very considerable ser- 
vice by the course he takes. My character will 
shine all the brighter for these attacks. Frié¢tion 
is good for solid silver. My friends will be stirred 
up to defend me with new zeal and ability; and 
the consequence will be that I shall have more 
celebrity and influence than ever. It may be so. 
Perhaps I ought to be thankful to the man for his 
good offices. But, to tell the truth, I quite pre- 
fer the old-fashioned way of showing friendship. 
And I have no doubt the Lord does the same. 

A prince was once leading his forces in the 
neighborhood of a castle that displayed a friendly 
banner. To his surprise he found himself vigor- 
ously shot at from the walls and towers. He sent 
to demand explanations. In due time a cour- 
teously-worded reply came; and the owner of the 
castle begged leave to assure his illustrious friend 
that personally he had the very best feeling toward 
him; was far from being disposed to do him any 
injury; in fact, was doing what in his judgment 
would in the end best serve their common cause. 
It was true that for the time being he had loaned 
his ramparts and guns and gunners and powder 
to the enemy; but, as for the ball, he had nothing 
to do with the furnishing of that. ‘The metal 


WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 221 


and the moulds in which it was run came from 
the enemy only. And the baron felt sure that his 
prince was so skilful, and so well armed, and so 
well supported by his friends, that no amount of 
firing with such ball would be of any real disser- 
vice to him. He had too good an opinion of him 
and his troops to think otherwise. Nay, he ex- 
pected the happiest results. Under the firing his 
liege would find his men getting yet more valiant 
and expert in the art of war. Admirable defence 
would be made, and in the last result it would be 
found that his illustrious highness is stronger and 
more illustrious than ever. 

The prince was unconvinced by this reason- 
ing, acute and plausible as it was. He fell into 
great indignation, and replied, ‘‘ Since this seems 
to you a friendly way of proceeding, I will try it 
on you. I happen to know that your hereditary 
enemy, the Earl of Redgrave, is on his march 
against you, with intent to raze your fortress. I 
will join him. He shall have the use of my troops 
and guns and powder; as for the ball, he may fur- 
nish that. You see that on the whole this will be 
quite a formidable-looking combination. Your 
friends will naturally be alarmed, and will rally 
about you. They will see the necessity of great 
and skilful measures of defence; and so I shall be 
the means of drawing out such zeal and efforts on 


/ 


222 LEMPTED iLO CNBELLEF. 


your side as will in the end greatly promote your 
interest. ‘I‘o be sure, matters will look dark for a 
time; but keep up good heart. Good causes are 
bound to prevail; if your cause is good, do not be 
worried when my batteries open upon you. I 
shall thunder away at my best; but it will still all 
be in the most friendly spirit. I beg to assure 
you that your valuable good will is fully recipro- 
cated.”’ 

Have not we been finding fault with England 
on account of the Alabama? ‘That vessel preyed 
on our commerce till she became a public terror. 
On inquiry it appeared that she was built in’ 
English docks and by English workmen, and 
with a very general understanding that when fin- 
ished she would do what she could to injure us. 
We took offence. It seemed to us a very un- 
friendly thing todo. Perhaps we were mistaken. 
Instead of getting angry over the matter, and 
starting an International Board of Arbitration, 
and pleading for heavy damages, it may be that 
we should have been thankful to England, and 
have paid her at least some handsome compli- 
ments for the splendid lessons in patience and for- 
titude and naval taétics which she taught us. To 
be sure, she did not claim so much as this, but 
she did claim that, despite all appearances to the 
contrary, she had always been our very good 


WHAT DO THEY MEAN? 223 


friend. But we were unreasonable enough not to 
like that style of friendship, and even to presume 
to think that England herself would not like a 
return in kind. After all, was it so very unrea- 
sonable ? 

In these days the diffusion of unbelief is chiefly 
at the hands of men who dress in the Christian 
uniform. ‘They ought to be called to account for 
this by the Christian public and their own con- 
sciences. It is utterly unjustifiable and shameful. 
Whether they know it or not, these men are stri- 
king at the vitals of society after a far more com- 
prehensive and deadly way than are the men who 
distil and vend intoxicating drinks or distribute 
obscene books and piétures. And they can say 
nothing for themselves which such men might 
not urge in defence of their nefarious business. 
Let them not talk about their confidence in the 
truth, and of the increased breadth and strength 
of the defences sure to be provided under assaults; 
as well might the scoundrel who is tempting the 
public to flagrant vice talk about the final triumph 
of virtue and the moral strength men will get 
from resisting temptation, and the glorious coun- 
teracting efforts that will be called forth by what 
he is doing. What right have they to build and 
equip Alabamas to prey on the religion and coun- 
try for which they profess friendship? Whatright 


224 TEMPTED TO UNBELIEF, 


have they to loan ramparts and munitions of war 
for sharp-shooting at their own flag and at the 
men who wear their own uniform? I do not 
know, nor do they. 

If such doings are friendship to Religion, it 
altogether prefers enmity. 


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